Home > Trip Reports > May 26, Steamboat Prow, MRNP

May 26, Steamboat Prow, MRNP

5/26/13
WA Cascades West Slopes South (Mt Rainier)
3361
5
Posted by AndyMartin on 5/27/13 9:08am
The annual Memorial Day pilgrimage to Steamboat Prow took place in unusual conditions this year. A busted forecast changed from partly sunny to consistent drizzle, rain and snow for practically the whole day. Despite the overcast the green housing on Interglacier was so intense that I still managed to achieve major sunburn, with never a view of the sun!
After a cool bear encounter about a mile and a half in we booted up the trail, crossing the usual mixture of deep snow drifts and bare wet trail until about a half mile before the Interfork stream crossing. Despite considerably less snow than last year there were several viable crossings which should be good for a while. Above Glacier meadows the climb was the usual long, switch-backing slog in 8-12 inches of fairly new and totally saturated snow. The drizzle turned to snow at about 7,000 feet but the heat was intense, giving the curious sensation of skinning through a sauna with snow falling.
There were plenty of wet slides visible from Mt Ruth and St Elmo€™s pass, but a course up the center on the lowest angled slopes seemed safe enough. The top 1,500 feet of skiing was in a vertigo-inducing whiteout, but the visibility slowly improved as the snow got deeper and stickier. The last 1,000 feet was a straight-line fight between suction and gravity, which gravity just barely won.
There is still plenty of coverage on the route and a couple of real freeze-thaw cycles would drastically improve conditions. Still, this is always a rewarding and tough route with a bit of everything!
Hey, we're the ones you saw up top of Steamboat. Too bad to hear the ski visibility wasn't much better for you than it was for us a bit later.

Thanks for the photos!

Was there much mud on the approach? Trail runner appropriate or should the real boots come out?

We used trail shoes for about an hour. Lots of bare trail early on the south-facing slope, then long snow covered sections with interruptions of bare trail from 50 to a few hundered feet long. Personally I prefer to boot it further in trail shoes until the snow is continuous and just deal with the weight of the pack.

DOH! I was not clear at all there, I meant trail runners vs. hiking boots for the approach, not AT boots.  My trail runners are pretty open mesh and not so fond of the mud

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AndyMartin
2013-05-27 16:08:46