June 29, 2003, Mt Adams, Adams Glacier

After a excellent night of sleep at our high camp, we were climbing at 6:15, about 3 hours earlier than the day before.  We were looking at either the Adams glacier or the N face of the NW ridge, but we were still hoping to run into Ben & Jason and see if they had any other interesting ideas.  As it turns out, we never ran into them as they left Saturday evening after skiing Friday & Saturday.  We took a much better route onto the N ridge saving us time and we made the summit at around 11.  We thought we'd wait at the summit on the chance that they would show up, but the winds were picking up and it looked like clouds might be moving in.  We decided to drop in, deciding on the Adams glacier because we could ski from the summit without hiking up to west peak and the bootpack from the day's climbers would help in navigation (2-3 climbing teams and a ranger that solo climbed it - he was really cool climbed S side with skis / left skis on summit & decended N ridge, then climbed Adams glacier to get back to his skis and ski out S side) although we had literally stared at the line for hours and practically had it memorized.  The snow was slightly firm at the top, but still very easy to turn in.  It turned to nice corn lower down and we had nice turns for a long ways on a long smooth section on skiers' left of the glacier.  There was a big crevasse to wind around and some cool sections of intense views into the glacier to the right, and then it was a nice long cruiser that led us right back to our camp.  Both Sky and I were grinning ear to ear, overjoyed at such a sucessful weekend with such nice snow and amazing scenery.  We both vow to return to the N side of Adams.  The only slight bummer on the trip was that Sky's camera jammed and he was unable to take any pictures.  On the other hand, skiing without the camera allowed us to make more fluid decents and focus on the skiing.