Home > Trip Reports > January 9, 2015, Paradise

January 9, 2015, Paradise

1/9/15
WA Cascades West Slopes South (Mt Rainier)
5279
7
Posted by Bryan L on 1/9/15 12:05pm
Matt and I headed for Paradise today hoping the sun might come out and soften up some corn on the Muir snowfield or Nisqually Chute. While the day started promising with low winds and some sun, by the time we got to McClure Rock, high clouds had moved in, temps were dropping, and winds were picking up. We hung around for a while waiting to see where things were headed, but finally decided the snow wasn't softening up and headed down Edith Creek. While steeper south aspects had softened some, flat light and deep melt runnels made for exciting ski-by-knee-braille. Oh well, it was awful purty out there.
We had similar conditions on the 7th.  We kept searching and found this...

The 1/7 pics were in the area we skied, lovely baby butt skiing +6 to +7, down lower it turned into -5 ice on the way out.

Yep that was amazing January corn. Especially given the fact every other aspect was crap. We made it to the longmire gate at 5:03 with the Ranger right behind us.

January 7th continued... skinned to 8000 where we found the semi boiler plate again.  Being a lot older and a bit smarter... turned it around and headed down.

Yeah on the 6th there were many many avalanches; the back bowl on Mazama had the longest crown I've seen there (on the south-facing slope of 911).  I found a broad range  of crusts.  Coming down the face of Mazama I was pleased with myself and my new Volkl Nanuqs until a whole plate of crust collapsed underneath me sending my lead ski flying and my *ss up, back, and straight down on my heel: OUCH!  Layed there a while waiting to see if I could move my right leg.  Then garlaned down the rest of the face, put skins on until the tight woods; then postholed till the snow got soft enough to sink thigh deep; then skis on again; and I was able to skin out.  Good day compared to what might have been LOL

Andy, that crown in the back bowl extended all the way around to north facing as well . Intermittent only at the east facing lower angle slope. I had heard of this happening but never seen it before.  All along the Paradise wall there were slides larger than normal. It all settled out right at the last serac. The rain runnels had stopped at that point as well on the east facing paradise glacier runs. It sure surprised us and we went for it closely following DW's tracks.

Yep it was a big one!

Reply to this TR

12321
january-9-2015-paradise
Bryan L
2015-01-09 20:05:34