9/15/07 - Flett/Russell Glaciers - MRNP

At 3:30 am, the Pit Stop in Buckley suddenly became busy as Kyle, Eric, and myself got our last minute caffine fixes, loaded Eric's Rav, and headed out towards Mowich Lake.  After passing through some relatively weak fog, we pulled into the parking lot.  We jumped out, loaded up, and opted for the Spray Park trail rather than up through Knapsack Pass.  We headed off and noticed that we could see the stars now, probably meaning that we would be above the clouds.  Once we reached a good vista just shy of the Flett Glacier, we stopped and caught some good photos of the sunrise.

Once the sun came out, things began to heat up quickly, and we could see that the clouds were sitting at around 4000' or so.  Rainier was out clearly in all her magnificent beauty, and continued to be so throughout the entire day, minus small fits of haze here and there.  We reached the Flett Glacier and stashed extra gear on the rocks.  We climbed up hard snow and ice until we reached the next rock band.  Crampons would have been helpful, but were not necessary, and come afternoon, they would be pointless (no pun intended).

We decided to depot the skis/boards and continue up to see what we could find, and if we were inspired, we would come back and retrieve our gear.  The Russell Glacier had a long and incredible mellow line running between two crevasse fields, so we hiked back and grabbed our gear.  After spending the morning hiking and scouting, the sun had heated things up to a nice consistency.  Even the large suncups could be skied/boarded rather easily after being heated all morning long.  We headed back down, getting turns as much of the way as possible.  We didn't run into to anyone until the afternoon when we were packing all of our gear to head home. 

After a quick stop at Spray Falls, we headed back, noticing the clouds had thickened and moved up to maybe 5000'.  At Mowich we were no longer in the sun.  We quickly loaded up, logging my first consecutive year, Kyle's 5th, and Eric's 6th.  We drove back into town, and decided that after a good 16 hour day, Mazatlan in Enumclaw sounded rather appetizing.  All in all a great trip, and really decent conditions for Sept.

Edit:  Add pics