June 15, 2005, Mt Adams, SW Chutes

The sunshine on Mt Adams Wednesday definitely made up for the clouds on Hood Tuesday.  Left Portland late and could see the sun would start to hit the SW Chutes around 9:30 am.  About the same time I left the Cold Springs lot for my solo up Adams.  The South Climb trail was free of snow to about the intersection with Round the Mountain trail.  From there on up it was pretty well consolidated except for the rare post hole.  

At the bottom of the False Summit slope I donned crampons and ice axe.  And I'm glad I did.  There was one to two inches of compacted snow and ice on top of a one to two inch thick crust of hardpack/ice (?).  Below the crust was up to a foot, at least in the few places I checked, of unconsolidated snow.  Not sure what the name of this type of snow is, but I would describe it as corn with out the meltwater, just dry corn.  I would guess this was the snow that fell last week.  The wind increased as I climbed higher.  Snowboarding this slope was not much of a backup plan if the Chutes were not looking good.  

It was 3:30 pm by the time I was ready to descend the SW Chutes.  Not having done this line before I took my time entering, with axe in hand.  Took a couple of chute wide width cuts to check the snow as well as to get to a point where I could see down the slope more than 40 feet.  Now this is why I came here.  A thin ice glaze on top of patches of one to two inches of fresh snow on top of hardpack.  For the first couple of thousand feet the slope was a blur as the ice glaze chattered down with me.  Even the last thousand feet of turns the snow was great.

Thanks for the pics that were posted on this site of the SW Chutes.  

p.s.  The second gate to Cloud Cap was locked the morning of June 14.  Go figure :D