May 27, 2017, Van Trump and Turtle, Rainier

Comet Falls trail runs into fairly solid snow in just half a mile, at 4000ft, though I saved the skinning until more reasonable terrain (without logs, mudholes, branches everywhere, etc) at 4600ft. Snow appears to be sort of consolidated, but not much actually froze below treeline, so booting along those tricky traverses over the creek worked out alright. Once above the falls, it's easy skinning wherever you want to go. I went up the east lobe of the Van Trump glacier, then up about half of the Turtle, to 10500ft, where time (and cooking snow) impelled descent. I ended up descending the west lobe of the Van Trump, looking a bit more smooth than the Turtle, which was starting to show small penitentes. Then 8000-10000ft is apparently the firnspiegel zone over there, all very smooth and not oversoft at all. Just right! Then things got sticky (but not too mushy) in the open areas below that. I descended starting at about 1:30, so an hour or two earlier would have probably been just fine off the top and much better down below. It's pretty warm out there!

I saw nobody except two climbers doing their best to avoid postholing on the way to Camp Hazard, a bunch of tracks on the fingers, more than one set of circumnavigational-looking tracks (or maybe just a round-trip to way over west somewhere), a few hundred dots over there on Muir, and later on the way back, a small crew setting up camp in the park for tomorrow-shredding and dozens upon dozens of really uncomfortable-looking hikers who all wanted to know if I made it to the falls (You bet I did!).