June 24, 2005, SW Chutes, Mt Adams

My favorite characterization of the SW Chutes is from Lou Dawson in Wild Snow who in his blurb on the SW Chutes says, "Indeed, even if you're a skiing atheist, and you manage to carve turns down this amazing line, you might be convinced that, yes, there is a God - and yes, the Supreme Being must be a skier." (thanks Jonathan for finding that)

We got the SW Chutes in perfect conditions yesterday and though I don't think it prompted any changes in our theism beliefs, the above quote accurately portrays the quality of this descent.


Upper half of photo: Adams as seen from Trout Lake Friday evening with our descent start point, end point and the SW Chutes marked.
Lower left: Ann in the Chutes; Lower right: Andy with 2000' more vft of the chutes to go.

Since Friday was the last day with a good forecast, I traded the day in-exchange for working this weekend. Ann, Andy and I left Cold Springs slightly after 5am. We followed the summer trail in our tennis shoes ascending the ridge climber's left of the Crescent Glacier.  Above the Crescent, at 8400', we traded our tennyrunners for boots and skins. We skinned our way towards the False Summit, with Ann/Andy booting the final few hundred vft and me skinning with the assistance of ski crampons.  

It was moderately windy at the False Summit. From there we skinned to the summit, where we were greeted by , . What we assumed was the summit was actually, per the GPS, .08 of a mile from the true summit, though the point we were at visually appeared higher then the surroundings. We took photos and socialized on the summit with Max, a French exchange student who, in addition to recovering Andy's dropped helmet (thanks Max!), complimented me on my Dynafits and then told us how he used Dynafits when he raced the ).

We started our descent around 12:45. The snow off the summit was excellent softened snow. We traversed skier's right (west) around the top of Piker's and got a look into the chutes west of the SW Chutes that run towards the Avalanche glacier. They looked a bit rocky but would be fun to do in a bigger year. Once in the SW Chutes the snow was perfect corn, and surprisingly stayed that way for the entire 3500vft of the chutes. I had forgotten how amazing this run is, it just keeps going and going. Once at the base of the chutes, we traversed left and skied to the end of the continuous snow at 7035'. We were soon joined by




Note re USFS Fee Demo enforcement: I did get another USFS ticket on my car for not having a summit/parking pass. I had every intention of purchasing an annual summit pass, but since the USFS office wasn't open when I drove thru at 12:30am, I couldn't get the annual pass then, so I figured I'd just purchase it on the way out and since this was a weekday it was unlikely anyone would notice. This morning I did purchase a NW Forest Pass at REI and I sent off checks to pay both tickets. Is two tickets within 6 days some sort of record?