Glacier Basin, White River, Rainier

I was also at Glacier Basin last saturday.  Yes it is still alive and well, once you get past the wonderful new route of 1 trail-less mile.  It was quite tedious at times negotiating the wreckage.  The trail was totally gone!  I was amazed at the extent of the damage.  I would say it tacked on an extra 45 min for me each way.  I talked to a group of rangers on my way back who were scouting out areas to route a new trail, they said it will likely be 2 more summers before it would be in place.  But anyway it was continous snow just before Glacier Basin camp and Interglacier is purdy white!  Didn't find corn at my high point of 8k however, just mushy but lots of fun.

The corn was amazing there today... we skied Mt Ruth.  The snowpack has consolidated nicely.  No pollen either.  A little sticky dirt down low.

I uploaded a little helmet cam footage to youtube:
http://youtube.com/watch?v=7L1dgwPgBIw

The damage to the trail was crazy... no more can you turn your brain off on the way out.

Sweet footage! What sort of helmet cam do you use? expensive?

It's from viosport... ~$300 for the kit.  They've much improved the attachment system (between camcorder and helmet cam) from the their old models, but the microphone totally sucks.  Image quality is pretty good - almost on par with standard definition DV. (youtube really degrades the quality, so you can't tell much from the posted footage).

author=Merk link=topic=7252.msg28901#msg28901 date=1180415284]
I was also at Glacier Basin last saturday.  Yes it is still alive and well, once you get past the wonderful new route of 1 trail-less mile.  It was quite tedious at times negotiating the wreckage.  The trail was totally gone!  I was amazed at the extent of the damage.  I would say it tacked on an extra 45 min for me each way.  I talked to a group of rangers on my way back who were scouting out areas to route a new trail, they said it will likely be 2 more summers before it would be in place.  But anyway it was continous snow just before Glacier Basin camp and Interglacier is purdy white!  Didn't find corn at my high point of 8k however, just mushy but lots of fun.

Thanks for the pictures - mine exactly, though -10x the file size apparently. The trail carnage is humbling as to the power of nature when it gets grumpy like last November. The emptiness of Glacier Basin is a thing to behold when you get there. Nothing better than solitude of skiing at Rainier in May and - if you can get it - September.

Hi there. How long is the ascent to Ruth Mountain? Did you do the slog in a day or an overnighter?

re: Ruth:  we left at 10am, got back to the car at 5pm, I think.  We weren't rushing.