Home > Trip Reports > 8/24 Heaven and Hail at Paradise

8/24 Heaven and Hail at Paradise

8/24/14
WA Cascades West Slopes South (Mt Rainier)
6337
8
Posted by Don Heath on 8/27/14 9:01am
Perhaps I should have gone to church.  But the temptation to ski with Brad after a one year gap was too great.  Add the forbidden fruit of back sliding with two new guys onto the Paradise Glacier made me lose my religion! 

We left Paradise PL at 11, booted up 2.5 hours to our highmark at 8800(?) below Anvil.  The weather was starting to look threatening, although still plenty of blue sky.  So we skipped lunch (actually, second lunch), in order to try and miss the wrath of God. 

The ski down was really fun! Sun cups were small, and the runnels were actually perfectly spaced for weightless turns. We covered the spectrum - Brad and me sliced through on teles, Noam mashed the soft cups flat on his split board ;D, and Mike paralleled over the tops.  We threaded between the crevasses, and just barely squeaked by on skier's far left side of the ice.  I'm willing to bet a six pack that Sunday at 2 PM ish was the last chance to ski all the way without rock scrambling.  Anyone want to try and collect on that?

Lightning and thunder were rumbling over the Tatoosh as we headed down.  I made the mistake of trying to go back on the upper trail (Sluiskin Falls?), which added several hundred feet of vertical and also at least another mile of scrambling up the exposed ridge, with our lightning rods A-framed over our heads, tempting fate.  After several ear popping crashes, the heavens really opened up and we were running as fast as our sore feet/tired legs could carry us.  Noam had the sense to stop and put on raingear, not so the rest of us.  I haven't been that wet in the mountains in a long time.

We brought our own beers into the lodge, and lounged around for awhile, before heading  for home.  2 inches of slushy hail, and a fresh rock/mud slide on the road made it a cautious trip down past the bridge.  It was pretty to see white high lights on the Tatoosh, though!  All in all, a heavenly trip that put the fear of God in us.  A few pictures to follow.
A few pictures:

Nicely worded! Proceed at your own risk !


Great post!  Looking forward to catching some turns with you in the future.

Sounds familiar. It was quite a shocking Sunday. I think our group all has varying levels of PTSD.

That will teach you to miss church - backslider.

We got back to the car just before the rain started, Don.
Worst Hail storm I've seen on the mountain in 20 years of going to Mt Rainier... a real gullywasher.



Missed getting hit by a boulder careening down the washout coming down Ricksecker grade by microseconds.




more pics HERE.


Nice Don - good to get some Kwasnowski time now that he's home.

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8-24-heaven-and-hail-at-paradise
Don Heath
2014-08-27 16:01:39