May 27-29, 2017, Glacier Peak, Cool Glacier HW -Vid

Its always bluebird corn on Instragram!
Video:
https://vimeo.com/219791005

Sorry for the slow response, but the general beta should be useful for a few weeks.

Real beta - Sauk river road is marked closed less than a mile in. Because the road is well sinking. Pro-tip - folks were driving past it to the trailhead though not sure what some heavy rains will do and how the forest service feels about that.

Trail has a few blow downs but mostly clear for about 7 miles where the snowpack starts fairly abruptly (4400') - I would say less than 15 minutes of transitional hiking before you can skin and hit the open slopes shortly after.  We did the volken guide approach to the col west of white peak and it worked well. others were traversing east around white peak.  Skinning by late afternoon everywhere was pretty sloppy.  Most parties camped further than we did but I prefer camping shortly after the first descent to minimize carrying the overnight gear ( 5600'), also this allowed to better time the return ascent and descent on the way out.  On summit day we took about 6:30 to summit and summited right around 11:30. The Cool Glacier headwall skied beautifully but the rest of the ski was past its prime.  Seems like skiing on anything below 8 or 9k had to be hit before 9am to get it good as the return slope back toward the hiking trail was prime when we hit it at about 7am on Monday.  The general lack of deep freeze overnight played a major role here.   We leap frogged with a friendly group of 6 all weekend and out of no where 4 other parties emerged out of nowhere around the summit.


Photos if your interested:
https://goo.gl/photos/7hbgFQjHsUk2sLc58