Fuhrer Finger April 22-23

Boon and I headed up to the Fuhrer Finger on Monday/Tuesday, hoping to summit early morning on Tuesday. Crossing the Nisqually and the fan was hellaciously hot; we started off skinning and roped up though it wasn€™t entirely necessary €“ the glacier is in great shape, and the snow was firm despite the solar radiation. Ascending the fan was a trick as the snow was too hard for skinning, but when booting we broke through a sun crust to about hip-deep snow. We got to camp at 9200 tired but still hoping for better climbing conditions up the finger the next morning. 

We left camp around 3:30am and made our way across the upper Wilson easily on foot, opting to ditch skins from the onset in the interest of saving weight and transition time. As we entered the finger the snow conditions deteriorated from supportable crust to the same breakable crust with about 16 inches of sugar underneath. It made for an absolutely exhausting and painfully slow bootpack up the finger. After 6 hours of uphill snow swimming we reached the edge of the upper Nisqually Glacier at about 12,300ft, and given our energy level, snow conditions, time, and the quickly growing lenticular, we put our skis back on and enjoyed an alternately icy, windblown, and breakable crust skiing back to camp. Luckily, the ski down to the bridge more than made up for the conditions up top: killer spring skiing on nice consolidated snow. We came home to bacon wrapped steaks prepared by our very own Tater, thanks buddy!