Mt Rainier Skiing

Mt. Rainier, WA
Skiing On or Near the Muir Snowfield
October 21, 2007

Ah, it's great to stretch out the ol' skinning legs! Kirsten just had her cast removed after five weeks of healing from her freak collision with a bicyclist in which she broke her wrist and sprained her sterno-clavicular joint. On top of that, it had been well over three months since we had done any skiing at all. As we were packing our gear Saturday night, we found it much as we had last left it early in the summer -- some of it dirty, some of it badly in need of wax -- a nostalgic reminder of those days when it isn't necessary for your vertical feet of skiing on snow to surpass your vertical feet of hiking to the snow on dirt.

Sunday morning we caravanned down to Rainier with a group of about a dozen. We pulled in to the Park around 9:30 and got the news that the gate wouldn't open until 11 o'clock while they finished the snow plowing. We speculated they were trying to force feed business to the Longmire restaurant. Nonetheless, we met up with dozens of other skiers and wiled away the time, and retold the story of our harrowing coffee mission. A lactose emergency emerged as they are prone to do, and our car needed to find a coffee stand in Spanaway. As fate would have it, we repeatedly approached several stands from the wrong lane and couldn't get over in time. Until finally there was one. As we pulled in, the barista standing outside in an oversized sweatshirt put out her cigarette and went inside to serve us. As we pondered the sign that said, "Come check out Scarf Thursday," the barista took off the sweatshirt revealing her approved barista uniform: a scanty police shirt. Then when we finally looked at the name of the place that we were at, the light bulb flickered on. It was deftly named, "Hot Chick-A-Latte."

When the gate opened early, sometime before 10:30, there was a mad dash up the road to paradise. We started skinning behind a long queue of skiers at 11:15. The line snaked up from the visitors center and on up past Panorama Point. Here the wind picked up and snow occasionally blew across the slopes. The degrading weather thinned out the crowd. We climbed up a ways, before venturing over to a slope above Edith Creek. We dug a test pit and found an easily released 5 inch wind slab on top, and a moderately releasable layer about 18 inches down. We started toward a lower-angled slope and Becky paused to jump on the snow just above the test pit and made the deeper layer slide. This caused us enough concern that we headed to safer terrain.

At around 8,000 feet our carpool turned around. The snow on the ski down was variable, from breakable crust to wind-packed powder to thinly covered rocks to mashed potatoes. But Kirsten was able to ski through it all without reinjuring herself, which was the primary goal for the day. It was nice to be back on the skis and out in the mountains, and a nice little adventure to hopefully signify the kickoff of the ski season.

YAB & Tomyhoi

Yellow Aster Butte and Tomyhoi Peak
7,451 feet
Semicircumnavigation Route
September 8 - 9, 2007

This was the weekend Kirsten and I had reserved to take off and do a nice summer trip on our own. After a couple weekends in miserable weather, we were ready for an easy, sunny, dry, warm trip with no snow, freezing wind, rain or rime ice nor temps in the teens nor pre-dawn alpine starts. After consulting our hiking and scrambling books, searching for something mellow and appropriate for a two-day trip, and not requiring any off-trail hiking, we settled on the Tomyhoi and Yellow Aster Butte ("YAB") combo. When Kirsten was at REI on Friday, she ran into Maria and found out she and Randy were heading in to do Tomyhoi, too, and Jim was going to come out Saturday night and meet them. We figured by far the most important requirement for this trip was the warm and dry part, so let's make a party of it. And Kirsten called Becky that evening and recruited her into skipping The Tooth and joining us instead.

When Kirsten, Becky and I pulled up the forest road near the trailhead suddenly cars were parked everywhere. At least a hundred of them. We couldn't figure out what was going on. Here we thought we had found this jewel of a trip, buried obscurely in the Cascades north of Mt. Baker and Mt. Shuksan, yet we wound up in the middle of some kind of trail parade. After hiking the short picturesque trail, we arrived at Yellow Aster Butte Lakes and looked around for a campsite big enough for five people. We found one just off the trail, but we didn't get the glorious views of Baker & Shuksan from camp. A ranger stopped by and chatted for a bit, apparently there had been a write-up in the Bellingham newspaper about this hike the day before, and that is why the throng of people were there. But it was mostly people on dayhikes, so as afternoon turned to evening it thinned out considerably.

We pitched camp, then hiked up to the false summit of YAB. It was a very quick but steep hike through pretty fall colored heather, and the view from the top was oustanding: Pickets, Shuksan, Ruth, Baker... all just right there in your face. We ran the ridge to the true summit, snapped a few pics, then headed back. Randy and Maria showed up shortly after we returned to camp. We opened some single serving wine bottles and chattered idly while we cooked dinner and soaked in the alpine vistas. As the sun was setting, Jim finally wandered into camp. After Randy read some North Cascades history to us, we attempted to sleep through the chilly night.

The next morning we set off for Tomyhoi. It was a pleasant hike and we took our time, pausing to take pictures every five feet. A few hours in, we reached the edge of the Tomyhoi Glacier. According to the guide and topo we were following, we needed to descend down the glacier, around a buttress, then climb back up to the ridge. The scale was difficult to decipher and we noticed a set of tracks going up the ridge when, we thought, based on the route description, that they should be going down around a rather large rib of rock. This is where things got interesting. I forgot my crampons back at camp. Jim intentionally left his crampons at home. I would much rather have left them at home than have shlepped them all the way in to camp, only to leave them there as tent weights. In any case, we forced our significant others to unwittingly participate in a little experiment of wearing just one crampon each. We tried wearing it on the downhill foot and on the uphill foot. I thought downhill would be easier and Kirsten thought uphill would be easier. Turns out she was right, for those of you interested in the technique.

After slowly working our way around the buttress to the point where we thought we should ascend back up to the ridge, we were greeted with an enormous bergschrund separating the glacier from the ridge. The expanse was much to great cross without any kind of climbing equipment, so we pushed on to the other edge of the glacier looking for a reasonable way off. Time was eroding, and we were not making any progress. Randy ended up in a moat trying to find a way to climb onto the steep-walled ridge. Jim ended up scrambling a low fifth class buttress, and Maria eventually followed him because he was actually making progress. The rest of us weren't comfortable soloing that kind of terrain and ended up working back across the glacier to that first set of tracks going up to the ridge. We scrambled up a smooth, wet rock finger that extended down onto the glacier and found ourselves on the ridge.

Finally we seemed to be making progress, and we continued along the ridge until we reached the base of the final scramble to the summit. It looked impossible. We couldn't see any way up it. We searched all over the place trying to find a way up that made sense, until eventually Jim and Maria materialized way up on the summit from the other side and waved to us and we realized we were probably out of time. They started down, and with them perched at the top of the ridge providing some scale, the route popped out at me. I got some nerve and scrambled up. It went pretty easily, but it was definitely exposed, so I just tried to move smoothly and not look down. Jim and Maria waited for me at the top, then Jim guided me around to the summit.

On the way down, we realized what had thrown us off about the route description. The glacier has receded so far, that the relevant south lobe is only half as big as it is on the route description. We thought we needed to cross a fair amount of glacier before we ascended to the ridge, but in reality there is now only about 100 feet of glacier left to cross!

Mt Rainier, Emmons Glacier

Mt. Rainier, WA
14,410 Feet
Emmons w/ Ski Descent
July 7-8, 2007

Pantengliopolis Video Fantasticness [18 mb]

TROG by Kirsten Hauge

Back in January, Pete and Becky came up with the idea of skiing the Emmons over 4th of July weekend. As expected, our usual gaggle of skiing friends jumped on the idea and a rather large group of us put in for permits. Months passed and we lost a few of the group due to injury and other commitments. In the end, we were left with Becky and Pete opting for the 4-day climb, Andy and Murray opting for the 3-day climb and Marcus, Anastasia and I opting for the 2-day climb. Sadly, Nate was not going to be able to join us because he was going to be at a friend's bachelor party-weekend. We had the forecast we had been waiting for … 14,000ft freezing levels for the entire 4-day event.

Marcus, Anastasia and I left Seattle on Friday early evening. After a quick stop at the ranger station and the White River Campground, we drove back to Greenwater to eat dinner at the Naches Tavern. Nate and I had eaten there in 2005 the night before we headed in to Rainier for our summit attempt. I remembered the milkshakes being really good and, being a bit superstitious, figured it couldn't hurt to re-create the events leading up to my summit in 2005 for our attempt this weekend. Marcus even bought Anastasia a new Naches Tavern baseball hat which I dubbed her new "lucky cap".

We hit the trail bright and early on Saturday morning. A sign at the beginning of the Glacier Basin trail states that the trail was obliterated in the November floods and that word really describes the trail well. I can't even imagine the force of water that moved all those huge trees and boulders the size of small cars. Luckily, the trail is well marked with yellow caution tape and it only took an extra 30 minutes to get to Glacier Basin. We were very happy to finally reach the snow so we could get the boots and skis off our backs and onto our feet. The skin up the Interglacier is always the same as I remember it … long and hot. As we topped out at Camp Curtis we could see two small dots skiing down the Corridor on the Emmons Glacier. When we got to Camp Schurman, we realized it was Becky and Pete. They had summited that morning and had skied the entire route back to camp. Yeah!

After talking with Becky and Pete, who had spoken to the climbing ranger the day before, our group of five (Andy, Murray, Marcus, Anastasia and myself) decided to leave for the summit at 6:30am. We had such a relaxing evening knowing that we didn't have to wake up until 5:30 in the morning - what a luxury on Rainier. I love the ski descents! The weather was sunny, warm and windless - we all sat around chatting, relaxing and eating. As the wind started to kick up for the evening, we settled into our tents. The wind blew pretty fiercely during the night and only a few of us were actually able to get a good night's sleep, Fortunately, I was one of them.

Pete and Becky got out of their tent to send us off in the morning and at 6:45am, we headed up. The long climb began and actually, for me, time went by very quickly. We took a couple of sit down breaks and made steady progress towards the summit.

Roughly seven hours after leaving camp, we had made it to the summit! What a huge accomplishment for everyone, but especially Anastasia since it was her very first time. We sat on the summit for 20-30 minutes enjoying the views and taking everything in. A solo climber walked on up and offered to take our picture, after which he quietly left. Other than that one guy, we were the only people on the entire summit - a very surreal and unique experience on such a glorious day. The summit was a little bittersweet for me, however, since Nate wasn't there.

The top 1500 ft of the Emmons was pretty icy but nice enough snow to hold an edge. Negotiating the bergschrund was easy and we managed to get past a couple other slightly sketchy crevasses with no problem. On the way up, I had been thinking there was no way we were going to be able to ski some of these tricky crevasse sections but here we were … doing just that. It was pretty neat. Eventually, the snow turned to schmoo and after only an hour and a half, we were back at Camp Schurman with huge, did I mention HUGE, smiles on our faces!

After a short rest, we packed up camp and headed back down the Interglacier for the last 3000ft of skiing. The ski down the Interglacier was slow and painful for some of us as we were really feeling the weight of the overnight packs and the tiredness of our legs. We skied to a small little ribbon of snow just above the campsite at Glacier Basin. After searching the river for what seemed like an eternity, Marcus finally found a decent rock-jumping river crossing that was pretty spicy. Thanks again Murray for the hand across.

The boots and skis went on our pack and we started the 3 mile hike back to the car along the obliterated Glacier Basin trail at 6:30pm. Luckily, the hike out went a little faster than the way in and we made it back to the car by 8:15pm with only 2 ankle rolls and no emotional breakdowns along the way. Success! Sadly, we were too tired to drink our TRB's (Triumphant Return Beers) so we postponed them to later in the week. Since it was so late, we all decided we wanted to get home as quickly as possible which means we didn't even stop for Triumphant Return Dinner (TRD) … all we ended up with was cold-cut sandwiches from the QFC in Enumclaw. But even that tasted good after our long day.

It was a super fun weekend with great friends, positive energy, lots of laughter, glorious weather, a fantastic climb and an unbelievable ski. I couldn't have asked for anything more except that it would have been cool to have Nate there, too. Next time. :)

Cross-Posts:
:: Repete.us TR

Winter/Spring 07 Montage

Winter + Spring 2007 Video Montage

On a whim and feeling creative, as much as that can possibly apply to me, I remixed a bunch of footage from the first half of the year together into a 4 minute video with a distinctly different theme. I've been listening to some movie scores recently, and was inspired to do something sort of dramatic. So I started experimenting. It's a bit unusual, though not unrecognizable; not intended to highlight anything in particular, just more of an artistic piece. I guess. Enough disclaimers?