August 3, 2003, Heliotrope Ridge

I ventured up to Heliotrope Ridge this morning, scouting crevasses and suncups for a group of teenagers I'm taking up there next weekend. I brought skis, of course; otherwise, what's the point?

Trying to get a sense of how fast the group of us might move, I walked slowly, stopped a lot, spoke at length to everyone I met, adjusted clothing and gear almost constantly, and in other ways tried to duplicate the infuriatingly slow pace of a large, heterogeneous group of novices. I even spent considerable time wandering here and there on the glacier itself, peering into crevasses, measuring snowdepths and making bad routefinding decisions. The trip took five hours and 45 minutes altogether, which must be a near-record for a tour which totaled just 3650 vertical feet and didn't even include a lunch stop.

Our annual, totally unprecedented, record-breaking drought and heat wave has been melting snow at a ferocious rate, uncovering old nevé and dirty glacial ice and, unfortunately, crevasses by the dozens. The Heliotrope lobe of the Coleman Glacier is downwasting fast, with cracks showing in all sorts of unexpected locations and weird orientations. As far as I can tell, the ice here is perilously thin, and the odd distribution of crevasses is related to otherwise-insignificant bumps and bulges in its underlying bed surface. In another decade or two, there may be only bits of remnant ice remaining on the hillside which currently looms over the tent city which appears every weekend at 6000 feet. Down in the main trough both the Coleman and the Roosevelt have retreated noticeably even within the past couple of years. We'll all grow doddering and old, telling our disbelieving grandchildren how we used to ski up here in August every year, just as my own grandmother used to describe the neighbor's farm-fresh eggs...in the untrammeled countryside which was the north Bronx in the early 1900's.  

On the other hand, the skiing was pretty good, for those not unduly bothered by the feeling of chattering across firm suncups (I had business back in town, and didn't stay long enough for these to soften properly). From above 7000 feet to just below the toe of the glacier there is still a perfectly reasonable run of about 1400 feet, with mostly minimal runneling and only small (e.g., 4 inch deep) suncups. In fact, I think the snow might have been superior to that which we encountered in the same area a month and a half ago, had I waited for it to soften further. Ema's photo in her report from Coleman Pinnacle a few days ago shows similar conditions.

The views, I almost need not point out, are great; across the Fraser Valley and up into the Coast Range; over the Sisters to saltwater and the  endless array of islands; up close to the Coleman Headwall and the Thunder Glacier tumbling spectacularly off the Black Buttes. The bugs weren't too bad either (especially compared to last weekend's fly-fest on Skyline Divide); before the sun got strong, the catabatic breeze rolling down off the glaciers kept them at bay, while upslope winds began to pick up by late morning (possibly in service to the thunderheads which were beginning to build). Overall, a very worthy half-day, mid-summer tour, just an hour's drive from home.  

Enjoy,

Mark