June 2-3, 2013, Mt. Raindeer, Fuhrer Finger

No recent summits and 2 1/2 feet of snow in the last week wasn't exactly what we were looking for, but with clear weather expected on monday and no serious warming until Monday afternoon, Beastman, Parks Department, and I decided to get up there and see how it looked. Sunday approach, observed lots of when slides on the way up, mostly point releases. Watched some large chunks of ice and rock come off the bottom of the Wilson above the fan while eating some lunch. It was fairly warm but overcast, camped around 9300 ft with mild wind below the Wilson Headwall. 3am start had us booting up the finger by 4, Big thanks to Stuart and his crew for setting a nice boot pack through 2 feet with breakable crust on their attempt Sunday, they reported making it to 12,500 before calling it. We reached the end of the bootpack by 7:30, Roped up and began a long and frustrating ascent of the upper Nisqaully. We opted to stick with boot crampons after watching the team ahead of us loose a ski into the crevasse below trying to skin the first off camber bit starting onto the Glacier, I felt bad for them but they seemed to take it well and just hung out for a while to let the snow soften before heading back down. We broke trail through the crust for a few hundred yards until reaching a spot we felt we could get some traction on skis, ski crampons were a must. The winds really picked up the higher we got, crust got firmer and more sketchy but still wouldnt support a boot making traction on skis a serious balancing act. After making 1000 ft. per hour up to 12500 our pace slowed to around 400 ft per hour as we approached our high point just below 14,000 near Point Success. We regretfully decided to call it at 11am with the temps rising quickly for the first time since it snowed last week, fearing rising rockfall and avy danger. We only had to cross 2 small snow bridges up high, on the way down the snow was firm and wind blown but pretty nice for that high up, our timing for the finger was perfect, 2 inches of nice corn without punching through or getting any serious movement. There was a fair amount of frozen debris on the exit with a nice peppering of rocks, we were back to camp by noon and debated a nap but it was roasting up there. The rest of the way down was a slop fest, we observed some large slides skiers left of the fan that were definitely not there on our way up, we felt like we had made the right call and were glad to have made it as high as we did given the conditions. Thanks for the good times guys.....