June 16 - 17, 2001, Mt. Adams

The road is clear to Cold Springs (5,600). We carried to a bit above Timberline Camp (6,200), and then again up the ridge west of the Crescent Gl. Climbers are going both east and west of the Crescent. We chose the more skier friendly (more snow) west route, with a camp, geezer style, above the Crescent at about 8,300. The false summit pitch had refrozen well by the next morning. Although there were areas where some decent steps were kicked in there were others where the snow was hard enough to prevent kicking steps, which make us appreciate our decisions to go with boot crampons and ice axe for this pitch. Overcast skies, low temps and moderate winds led us to conclude that no corn was to be had on the upper reaches of the mountain this day. So we made the best of the boilerplate until we found some quite reasonable snow on the east side of the false summit pitch between the rock bands. The snowfield below the lunch counter was starting to corn nicely as we cruised by and the Crescent Glacier was like peaches and cream. Suffered one, skis on, pine needle crossing below the Crescent and then made it down to 5,900 before loading up for the short carry back to Cold Springs. Pics of the trip posted at