Home > Trip Reports > October 28, 2006, EMS Rainier

October 28, 2006, EMS Rainier

10/28/06
WA Cascades West Slopes South (Mt Rainier)
8731
12
Posted by silaswild on 10/28/06 1:27pm
Nope, not emergency medical services; nope, not Eastern Mountain Sports.  It's the Edge of Muir Snowfield.  A mob of tayers wisely chose to ski above Paradise today, hopefully the last day of summer.  Possibly RJ the pied piper of Paradise and him merry crew will welcome winter there for us tomorrow (after enjoying an extra hour of sleep tonight thanks to the return to standard time)?!

Before 10 this morning there were a few inches of firm snow most everywhere above Paradise, with some bare footprints on the paved paths, also some slippery ice where yesterday's runoff had melted.  We chose to skin from 7300', where we enjoyed a snack with jimjar and snowslut, who reported sighting the senior hummel in a blur headed for muir.  At around 8000' we met our first descending skier, shaving the first warm kernels of corn off the previously frozen cob.  Shortly thereafter, three more came swooping down, thrilling us with their pleasure at the excellent conditions.

Considering the rising wind, and lessening fresh snow cover over old gray icy stuff, we chose to end our ascent at 8800', traverse to the Paradise Glacier to check for better conditions.  We found worse, so returned to the east Edge of the Muir Snowfield, and enjoyed 1700' of creamy corn around 1PM, with warm sun and light wind.

Along the way we saw about 30 skiers, including jimjar, snowslut, Andy (completing his 120th month), merk (finishing his 12th), pete a, becky (not Fred!), and markharf in his usual timeframe.

Tayers who were there today, please reply here.  Streakers, please post (or correct) your number of months completed today thanks to the great weather!

andy:   120
markharf: 47
merk: 12
paul_russell:  37
silaswild: 109
others.......
Hey Silias, thought I saw you ski by.... Kenji and I were there.  This was number 37 for me.  First time I waited to the last weekend of the month and was really thankful for good weather!

All true - a great day for month 120!
I'll get around to posting a profile one of these fine days...............

author=silaswild link=topic=5434.msg22863#msg22863 date=1162096029] markharf in his usual timeframe.


Shoot, Silas, that wasn't my usual timeframe.  I made a point of waking up early—12 noon departure from the parking lot—in recognition of the season of limited daylight now fast upon us.  Made it back to the car before dark, too.

I ran into a group of lurkers from Olympia as well as many of the aforementioned. A good day in the mountains, and entirely worth the long drive.  By next weekend, however, I'm expecting the balance to have shifted in favor of the Mt. Baker area.

enjoy,

Mark

Hi AndyMartin, congratulations on completing 10 years! If you would like have your profile added to the year round skiers page, send me a PM and I will get you the details of how to send it to me. I'm one month behind you at 119. Steve (atacomite) is early on in his streak, Friday's ski representing month number 1. Great conditions for starting a streak!

Did any of the Saturday skiers go up onto the upper Muir, above Moon Rocks? With the high winds and the dirty look of the snow around Moon Rocks, we decided not to go up there, but I'm really interested to find out what the snow was like.

TonyM, Scott and I skinned up to Muir and skied down from there. Very "variable" conditions from windblown patches of new snow to water ice to just plain dirty snow. Picking the best route down to skiers left yielded some pretty good turns, considering. The wind was gusty, but nothing like as bad as other times up there!

Blitz, Stewie and I tried to ski Muir on Sunday 29th. We left  the carpark with temps at 27'deg and strong winds. We hiked to about the top of Alta Vista and aborted due to extremely high winds.

You guys picked the right day! ;D Asphalt paths where extremely icy !
Scotsman.

Nice to bump into ya Silas, Paul, Kenji and others.  Yeah jimjar and I felt extremely lazy and decided to lap the cream of the corn.  This is after I told myself I would make it to Muir for the exercise.  Only over 2k to go.  So close, almost there.  What a lazy expletive!

On a sad note did anyone see my Guiness (empty of course).  I left it next to jimjars pack between laps and upon return it vanished.  Knowing that someone picked up my trash is a good feeling and to whomever did, they have their pint of choice coming.

You guys know I'm not a litter bug, just a meadow stomper. ;D

wolfs and I were there as well. We started up from paradise at 7:15am (had to be back early). The asphalt paths were most icy and treacherous, especially where someone had boarded down the day before. We thought our early turn around time of 10:30 would result in boilerplate skiing, but somehow things had softened quite nicely in the time it took from pebble creek to moon rocks. What a great day (err...morning!) Sure was glad that the asphalt had melted out on the way down.

It would be nice to know the final TAYer count from Saturday. Sure was a lot of us.

Congrats to Andy on 10 years of TAY!  Here's a photo of Andy making the most of the Muir snowfield.

Congratulations to Andy as well!!  To do anything for 120 months/10 years requires real perseverance.  There are so many things that could have stopped your streak-  illness, injury, family vacations, lose interest, and so on.  But none of those things happened and you join an elite and special crew!.  So thanks Andy for inviting Scott and I along to share a special day.

glad to see rainier is getting some winter, i hope the pattern continues!  and congrats to all of you streakers for raking in the months!  very inspiring for sure.

author=Paul_Russell link=topic=5434.msg22864#msg22864 date=1162103459]
First time I waited to the last weekend of the month and was really thankful for good weather!


bet that felt good paul!  way to push it to the limit.   ;D

We pushed on up to Muir through the wind,  it really wasn't that bad.  At least it didn't feel as cold as it was.  The skiing was pretty good,  you just had to turn around the ice patches, which for the most part you could find lanes through.  And then from Anvil down it was just hero snow.  We were a party of 4,  Eric J, Eric T, Megan and Allen.  We ran into Markharf, and a few other TAY'ers we probably haven't met yet.  Great early season day for us.

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