May 26-28, Rainier via Emmons

skiing off the top of rainier has long been on my todo list, and this weekend the stars finally aligned for me and three of my girlfriends.

as it has been mentioned, the highway into glacier basin is no more; weaving thru trees and boulders carrying 3-day packs, with skis and boots attached, took about an extra 2 hours. we were the only party at camp shurman sat evening; beautiful bright moon rendered headlamps unecessary.

the forecast for sunday was for mostly cloudy and chance of showers, so we planned to hang out and rest for the day. instead, we woke up to a blue-bird day, not a shred of wind, and the huge blanket of clouds spitting drizzle over the puget sound way below us. but the instinct for lazying about prevailed, so that's what we did the whole day, sunning on the rocks like lizards, chatting with the rangers, eating pancakes, you get the picture...

monday morning dawned clear and not as windy as the previous evening (we had measured 45mph gusts) and we started our bid for the summit at the leisurely hour of 6:45, hoping to find softened snow on the way back. the route to the summit took us over a few thinnish snowbridges - i punched thru in one place with one foot and one of us with both feet. it was windy and quite cold the entire ascent, so we did not linger on the summit, even though we had it to ourselves.  one party on foot had summited before us, but i think that was it for the day, rather unusual for a 3 day weekend with good weather.

the first few thousand feet of the descent, to the top of the corridor, were firm carveable snow, which would have been quite enjoyable had i not been so worried about picking a good line thru the crevasses. we had high hopes for smooth snow on the corridor, but instead had to contend with a bone rattling descent over refrozen corn. we rolled into camp shurman very happy with our unadventurous, no-mishap ascent and descent, chatted some with solo baker lisa (see TR earlier in the month) and had a fantastic ski down the interglacier, in perfect corn. i forgot all about the heavy pack, the tired legs, the awful slog ahead out of glacier basin, and let just let fly down the mountain - ahem, no tele-turns though...

best not to say anything about the walk out, except that we were able to keep skis on quite a bit past glacier basin and that we had cold beers waiting for us at the car.