July 3, 2005, Easton Glacier

Anastasia, Chad and I left the Park Butte trailhead at 4 a.m. on Sunday under clear skies with temps in the low 50s.  The trail's in excellent shape all the way up the railroad grade and the ridge above the old terminal moraine, with fantastic views of the rapidly melting lower Easton.

We reached continuous snow at about 5700 and changed into our boots at 5800, following a scrambled boot track on the west side of the ridge until crossing it at 6200 to drop onto the lower glacier.  Firm, still frozen snow with small suncups and runnels made for fast (if occasionally slidey) skinning to 7000, where we joined with the big climber's bootpack, skinning around it and picking our way through, or over, maybe a dozen small (6" - 2') crevasses.  There's a large, firm snowbridge over a series of big cracks at about 8000 -- still solid when we were there, but it won't last long.  The route remains fairly direct, but when that bridge goes it'll require a big detour around some of the more significant icefalls.

We continued up to about 9000, where we turned around (11 a.m.) to harvest the corn instead of booting up the frozen Roman Wall.  Great skiing back down to 7k, followed by softer, grabbier suncups and runnels to 5700, with one short carry over the lateral moraine.  All told, it's a great ski and will be for a little while, but only if the sun stops cooking it.