May 28-29, 2005, Emmons Glacier

With the forecast of continued good weather for the next few days and after eyeing the climbing route up the Emmons on Thursday from the Fryingpan Dave Z. and I concluded that the time was right to make an attempt to ski from the summit. On Saturday morning we met up with Phil and Oyvan and made our way down to the mountain. After getting permits, we arrived at the White River parking area about 10:00AM, got our gear together and began the hike up the trail to Glacier Basin. The trail is snow free until about 3/4 mile from the basin where it became patchy. We were able to sport our tennis shoes until Glacier Basin where we switched to skiis.
The ski up the InterGlacier was quite warm, but went pretty well. There were a few crevasses starting to open up on the portion of the Emmons between the InterGlacier and Camp Sherman. We got to camp around 4:00 PM dug in some tent sites, melted water and prepared for the next day. Since we were planning to ski from the top, we didn't start climbing until about 5:30AM. The sun came up just as we were starting to climb. Clear skies above and valley clouds below made for a spectacular sunrise. The route up the Emmons is not exactly direct at this point in time. It weaves around a fairly large section of crevasses at about 12,000 ft. There was no difficulty navigating that section, the route was just made a bit longer. Above that portion the route is mostly straight up to the crater rim with a couple of minor crevasse crossings. We reached the summit around 12:45 and hung out for a while in the sun with fairly light winds. We met up with Troy on the summit who had skiied up solo somewhere near the Wilson Headwall and was planning on descending the same route he had climbed (hope all went well).
We began our descent at about 1:30 basically following our climbing route. The snow was excellent the entire way down ranging from packed powder on the top 1,500 v.f. to corn for the remainder of the way to Camp Sherman. We arrived at camp about 2:20. After a bit of rest, we packed up camp and began our descent back to the car. The InterGlacier was quite soft, but made for some relaxing GS turns all the way down to Glacier Basin where we found our shoes and prepared for the grind out to the car. By 6:30PM we were on the road home. I slept quite well that night with the memories of a great ski still in my mind.