june 15, adams sw chutes

despite the slightly ominous weather forecast, i headed down to mt adams to meet up with my buddy who was coming up from reno.  when we arrived friday evening, the ranger told some horror stories about the cold springs trailhead, so we opted to camp elsewhere.  boy were we glad when we showed up at the th around 5am to see a crazy mess of cars parked in ditches and people sleeping right in the road.

neither of us had ever been here before, but the trail was quite obvious and the going was so easy that i wore my sneakers all the way up to the "lunch counter" area before finally taking the boots off my pack.


after telling ken over and over that we'd likely be climbing in zero viz and rain, we were pleasantly surprised by the weather.


the going was so easy that i put my new ski crampons on just to test fit them and then immideiately took them off.  we were at the false summit by noon, and the corn was nowhere near ready, so ken enjoyed the view while i went to tag the true summit.




glad to not be on rainier today...


by 2pm the corn was ready and so were we.


all the stories i'd heard were true--the sw chutes are fun to ride!  (though more of a "face" than "chutes" in my book)


some light shenanigans ensued as we tried to find the best way back to the south rib.


it took us longer than expected to traverse back around (maybe we dropped too low?) but the burn made the going quite easy.




the trailhead looked like a war zone, with cars strewn precariously between burned out trees, tents set up on piles of rocks, and gear hung to dry on charred and ash covered logs.  so we hopped in the van and drove 20 minutes back to our super posh campsite from the night before.


it was great to explore a new volcano with one of my original touring partners.  on the way home i remembered that my last ride of the previous season was on