June 26, 2005, Fryingpan Gl.

Hmm last weekend day of June. Time for June turns no matter what the weather. I had originally planned something more Cascadian, but the not tremendously promising forecast and not much more promising clouds at my house prompted a Plan B. It was time to give obeisance and fealty to Wahakapauken, the Minor Assistant Subdeity in charge of the blue hole on the east side of Rainier. And lo, it came to pass. After driving through drizzle til past the CM road, first the clouds lifted and then there were some geniune patches of blue. As I hiked up the Summerland trail and reached the bridge, the mountain's east side was nearly totally clear, with just hazy high clouds. I swapped trail shoes for boots at basically same spot as last year when I did this trip in mid July, just a few hundred vertical feet above the main trail. The posthole up the steep slopes to Meany Crest was a bit more miserable due to mushy snow and frequent soft holes between the rocks. After the first steep headwall switched to skins then carried over Meany Crest past the camps and resumed skinning again on the glacier slope. The snow on the glacier was beautiful and clean, almost completely smooth. Cumulus was starting to boil over from the Whitman side by now, and after having had the visibility drop during several incidents I decided to bail at about 8600 feet, before reaching intended goal of the left side saddle on Whitman Crest.

Snow on glacier was just a tiny bit sticky, not entirely pure corn but close  enough. The headwall portion was also nice but the stickiness did make it prone to slow sluffs, which I set of with some skicuts and let run. They moved slow, but they had some punch to them as evidenced by what happened when they hit the clif layer below - several kicked off some perched rocks that then rolled on below to the next slope.

Tahoma stayed just barely in view as I reached the park again, but eventually the whole lower valley filled with low clouds as I left and the mountain vanished in the gray. The blue hole had lasted just long enough for my selfish purposes, hoorah.