June 28, 2003, Mt Adams, Lyman Glacier

I managed to get friday night off work, so Sky and I headed to the north side of Adams to hopefully meet up with his friends Ben and Jason for some sweet lines.   Sky and I had both done the south side before, but neither of us had been to the north side and were very curious to check it out. They were talking about the Lyman glacier among other lines, and we were intrigued. Sky was busy until the afternoon and I had a lot to do to get ready, and combined with traffic and a couple of stops and slightly wrong turns, we hit the Killen Creek trailhead very late (maybe ~11pm or so).  We loaded skis onto packs and started walking by headlamp, hoping to stumble upon Ben & Jason's camp.  Although it seems we may have come very close, we did not find them and headed up and made camp near the lake marked elev. 7505 on the map.  Unfortunately it was 3am by this point and we knew we wouldn't get too much sleep.  We slept (Sky said he slept well, I felt I kept waking up and didn't get much continuous sleep) until about 8, and got climbing at 9, hoping that Ben & Jason would either see us or wait for us on the summit.  We climbed the north ridge to the summit and made it at about 2:30.  After the fact we learned that they dropped in around 2, so we just missed them again.  We saw tracks heading in the direction of the Lyman glacier, and figuring it had to be them, we decided to follow.  The slope leading to the glacier  was a nice mellow cruiser, on some sun-softend satstugi-like snow that was a nice warmup for what was to come.  The Lyman glacier had it all, giant seracs and eye-popping glacial scenery combined with some nice steep sections and absolutely wonderful snow.  In my opinion, the snow at that time (probably around 3 or slightly after) on that day was perfect in that it was soft yet not sloughy or grabby.  It really helped to inspire confidence, which was nice considering that at times there was some exposure.  Elated from the ski, we traversed back to our nice high camp where we relaxed and pondered what line we should ski the next day.  We decided to get up much earlier, so that if the other guys were still around we would hopefully run into them on the ridge or at the summit.  All in all it was an incredible ski day and perhaps my best decent ever considering the location and the conditions, even if we did miss a first decent by 30 minutes.