Home > Trip Reports > June 23 All 3 Bourroughs Sunrise.

June 23 All 3 Bourroughs Sunrise.

6/15/07
WA Cascades West Slopes South (Mt Rainier)
3508
7
Posted by Robie on 6/23/07 12:57pm
WE bagged our trip to Adams again because of percieved bad weather.Oh lets see how bout a Burroughs tour again! Had good vis so went out to 3rd burroughs.Enough snow there for a decent tour but the big  prize of the day was the pocket glacier between 2nd and 3rd. Lots of good corn snow with little to no runnels. this slope should hold up for a couple more weeks. Shots east of 2nd are fading and I doubt they last till next weekend. Interglacier MT ruth in good shape.And frying pan might just be the place to go next.Sourdough chutes still good.Ran into Ranger Casey again as we put our skis on for the pocket GL.
I wish that I had gotten up an hour early, but I did enjoy the beer and gym climbing last night that kept me in bed until 6, too late to join you. 

Nice to meet you up there Robie.
I ended up going down into the basin toward the White River side. That basin is huge - must be a mile across. Runnels, but widely spaced so could put a line between. After that I shoulda done one of two things - go all the way down on skiers right and picked up the Burroughs trail at the bottom, or just booted up the way I came. Instead, I tried to slant over and pick up the trail midway but missed it somehow and spent far too much time sidehilling dense slippery cedar. Finally found a gully up and only found the trail at the very end. The gully looked so good for skiing that I dropped the adjacent gully for many great turns, almost all the way to the bottom again. For me that was the best snow of the day, which was surprising because this gully faced SE.

Wolfs,shocked ,to hear that there was that much snow on the White river side. sounds like you had a good ski. We all need to be lobbying the park to get that Sunrise road opened earlier. Nice to meet you. You showed up while I was downslope checking out the 3rd burroughs chutes.
Jenn, does your gym have bar?If so I might have to go!

No, the gym came before the bar.  But, hey come belay anytime.  Fridays nights are always followed by the Reef or the Fish. 

Anyhow, we did get a good run off the first burrough (?)... my snowboarder turned tele friend Tara did an awsome job side stepping down the steep chute we were funneled into.  I had remembered seeing the tracks lead nicely into that chute on the hike up.  I enjoyed the drop in, but I really thought that she would slug me when she got to the bottom.  However, her optimism and adrenaline spread across her face in a shit-eating smile commencing at the valley bottom.  It was really the only way through the cliffs.  After the sewing machine knees, we figured we should head for some sun and beverage in the parking lot.  Mellow day: hike mostly, turns secondary, nice lunch on sunny alpine tundra.  Will bring shoes next time like we did for Fryingpan last weekend.

We will have to get on the same page at some point...

I LOVE Sunrise...

author=Robie link=topic=7457.msg29749#msg29749 date=1182715372]
We all need to be lobbying the park to get that Sunrise road opened earlier.

Ya know, one thing I noticed on the drive down was that there were various trees along the Sunrise road, those within about 10 feet of the road on the downslope side, that were just THRASHED.  Small trees snapped off, big up to 2ft trees shattered as if they'd been dynamited at the bottom, many trunks with 'core shots' where something had left gouges and slices in the bark. I think they got a little overzealous with the plowing and those trees were taken out either from sidespray or ice/rock chunks shot out with great force. This was particularly noticable on the service road that leads out to the generator shack, which I walked to get to the parking lot from bottom Burroughs; they had obviously plowed that too.
So yeah I totally agree that for skiing it would be great to have the road be open even earlier, but to me it looked like there was an associated environmental cost. I don't ever recall seeing this effect on the Paradise road, maybe because they skim off a little at a time. Nor do I remember seeing it on Sunrise road before. Maybe they sent a rookie plow driver up there this time, or were using newer more powerful equipment or something.

Wolfs, I noticed that aswell . I've spent quite a bit of time this weekend walking the road between Sunrise Point and Sunrise due to bad car shuttle management and there are  lot of trees destroyed even in that short section.

We should find out from the NPS how it happened. I also noticed along the road that there is a raised asphalt shoulder with holes drilled in it a regular intervals for the insertion of PVC poles to mark the road edge. In many of them the PVC had been broken off leaving a section of tube in it. ( anything to pass the time while slogging up the road in boots)

From what I saw it should be possibe to wand the road edge with the PVC poles to ensure the snowplough drivers have a reference. The raised asphalt curb is there for that aswell I think.

As you say , maybe a rookie driver??


I noticed a lot of broken trees as well.  I kinda put it off to the storm and regular avy destuction.
I will add this, the road crew at Chinook uses GPS on the pioneer cat . Seem like a good use of bucks. Road clearing usually goes pioneer cat - Yarder -snowblower . snowblower takes a beating when it hits a rock or tree. I'm not sure on the Sunrise road procedure. But as our sport has expanded and will continue to grow.we need more and earlier access. Easiest of all would be to the road open to White River Campground.

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Robie
2007-06-23 19:57:24