Home > Trip Reports > 12/13/14 - PaRADise

12/13/14 - PaRADise

12/13/14
WA Cascades West Slopes South (Mt Rainier)
28415
8
Posted by pipedream on 12/13/14 10:07am
For putting a ski pole through the rear window of my car this morning, today turned out quite alright. A coworker and I headed south to put the rad in Paradise. With no real plan we followed the hoard up Pan Point and after hemming and hawing over dropping down to the Paradise Glacier side, we decided to stay the course and follow the established skintrack towards Muir. We made it up as far as the entrance to the Chute before deciding to pull the plug and head back down into the ominous clouds inching their way up the mountain's southern flanks. Snow started falling in earnest when we reached the bottom of Pan Point and thick, white flakes were falling heavily in the lot (the telemetry shows they've stopped now, bummer). After a quick trip to the gift store for some last-minute holiday shopping we made it back to Tacoma just in time for some quality bumper-to-bumper traffic on I-5 home to Seattle.

The weather was superb, without any real wind and clear skies the whole way up. The snow was stellar, too. That dry, sparkly stuff winter memories are made of. There was about 3-4" new at Paradise this morning which deepened to 6-8" above Pan Point. Speaking of which, still lacks a decent uptrack... lots of folks were booting the first 1/3-1/2 of the ascent and the snowshoers, as usual, were out destroying anything viable. Our descent took us through Pebble Creek, which had enough wind-created features to keep this sideways slider smiling all the way down to Pan Face. The face itself was touchy, but skiers right offered superb turns and no rocks. From there, it was meadow skipping and trail slipping all the way back to the car. Much better than my last trip up in late-Oct.

EDIT: Pics

http://i.imgur.com/SUSfCi6.jpg" />





I've been waiting to see the reports today. That sounded good. Glad you got some good snow.

Yes, the snow was nice; I got there early enough to see one or two heading up Pan Face, then it got hilarious with people going every which way!  As they say, each to his/her own LOL

Hey man, would've been fun to cross paths. Let's get out some time!

Yours truly got the hole shot out the gate, setting the track up the climber's right shoulder of Pan Face, the route that Amar waxes poetic about all the time (I hate going up the middle of that damn thing, too). So funny how folks make a thousand different tracks all to the same place.

Our tour took us up the ridge b/w Muir and Paradise Gl, and down Muir through Pebble Cr to the Edith Cr benches, down to 4th crossing.












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Strong work! We watched the pair of skiers lay the first tracks down in Edith Ck. while we were heading up the snowfield. Piqued our interest over there, but we ended-up having to save it for another day.

Very fine day! We opted for a ramble over the pursuit of turns, found a little solitude and some enjoyable low-angle skiing.

Travelled to just above 7k, on E-S-W aspects. Snow was better than expected, with 1-3" of fluff atop a mostly supportable and fast crust. A little less energy in the snowpack than we'd expected, but the lee sides of nascent cornices did show a little bit of sun-driven sluff activity. Surface hoar on most aspects kept things rainbow-sparkly in the Paradise drainage,  reaching ~1/4" in many places. Dropping back into Edith Creek in late afternoon, we found a zipper crust on steeper/sunnier aspects. An insistent snow squall kept things wintry at the parking lot.

Edit: Just got a PM asking about the Paradise. We didn't get on it, as early-season bridges can be very thin. It looked smooth and almost sag-free; exactly the sort of thing that can lead to this (scroll to final photo).


Nice work on the photos to all. Really like the high res detail from pipedream's 3rd and the first shot from Charlie. Norseman's 2nd has a nice esthetic. Looks like conditions were all they needed to be! Might be time for me to stop looking for frozen waterfalls and turn my attention to the skis.

That crevasse collapse was spooky to see. Makes me feel better about my stubbornness to rope up when on glaciers... esp. in the early season. Even on skis that thing could have gone disastrous!


Awesome writeup man- what a day.

A few solid ones from Sat.. http://youtu.be/xHRhX717frQ

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12-13-14-paradise
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2014-12-13 18:07:06