Mar 19, 2017, Rainier -Upper Cowlitz to bridge (~6700')

Worked in a ~6700 ft. continuous splitboard descent Sunday on Rainier. About 10,600ft on the middle of the Cowlitz Glacier to Muir was good. Muir to about 7k ft was crap (icy/wind blown ridges), then 7k down to the Nisqually Bridge was awesome, put a smile on my face.

Some cell phone pics:



Chosen drop-in point to the Nisqually around 7k ft. Skipped the usually chutes drop-in point due to ice, took this line instead which was steep and fun(and not icy). We looked up at the chutes and they had been skied, but tracks were hard to make out near the top, so assuming the top was sketch. Curious to hear from those who dropped into it.

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The crew cruising past the moraine down to the bridge.
Rock fall was in full effect - a football sized rock came somewhat close to tagging me (I heard).

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A couple recent-looking slides were evident, this was the biggest between 4500-5k..ish. There was also a recent smaller slide on the somewhat wind-loaded Cowlitz, climber's left with an obvious crown around 10,700', so we opted to turn around when it got steep around 10,600ft near the base of the Cadaver gap slope (snow quality also looked questionable).

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Route up to the upper Cowlitz Glacier, down to the bridge. Exited the right side after following tracks. This was my second time down to the bridge and had exited the left side before. Right-side seemed more straightforward, but obviously condition-dependent.