SummitStories.com

Over a weelk in late March and early April 2008 I skied the Haute Route from from Chamonix, France to Zermatt, Switzerland with a group of friends from Seattle.

We experienced a bunch of different snow conditions from hard ice to knee deep powder and weather from blue sky to full blizzard conditions.

Here are my Haute Route pics

Ed, Sandy (Ed's wife) and I climbed Rainier Sat July 28 to Mon July 30 via Camp Muir -> Ingram Flats -> Emmons Glacier as the DC route was rerouted (see below). My pics here. Ed's pics.

I said hi to Mike Gauthier (Chief Climbing Ranger) at Ingram Flats. He has a post on the DC route closure. Also pics of the new route from a CC.com posting.

On Sat July 7 and 8 a group of six (Kirk, Jill, Claire, Rainer, Mike, me) head up climb Baker up the North Ridge.

At 6000' we chatted with Kurt the climbing ranger on North Ridge route conditions. He remembered my Baker Coleman group from the previous weekend. He said the snow and ice on the route where in fine shape and that the snow had frozen on Fri night.  He also expected cloud cover on Sat night and Sun. He pointed out a nice campsite area on rock off to the left at around 6500' that was next to water and away from the busy (potentially noisy) growing tent village.

After we made camp on Sat afternoon Rainer, Claire and I scouted out the route heading out on a bearing of 100 degrees. We walked far enough (maybe .5 mile out) so we could get a good view over the crevasse field and scope out a route through and up to the bergschund. We saw a faint bootrack route heading through and up and left past ice cliffs and then heading up. Rainer took a bearing of 74 degrees that would get us through in the dark the next morning. We headed back to camp and had dinner. Around 9pm I got up and spoke with a nearby solo climber who was also going to do north ridge.

We woke up at midnight to hear from Jill and Kirk that Mike was vomiting, cold and not doing too well. Kirk decided to stay and monitor Mike. The other four of us (Rainer, Claire, Jill, me) headed out. The solo climber had already left. Rainer did a great job on route finding through the crevasse field and up and past the bergschund. We did a group huddle to discuss the weather as the clouds, light rain and winds were picking up. Small rocks and ice were coming off the rock band above and whistling past ... which made it 'exciting'.

We decided to turn around and get lunch at Graham's in Glacier. On the way back we spoke with two skiers who mentioned that the solo climber had also turned around. We headed back to camp and packed up gear. We noticed a number of teams that had attempted the Coleman route returning early, we suspect also due to the weather conditions. Mike was doing much better so we headed back to the trail head, clean clothes and lunch.

A fun weekend out with good friends.

Pics here.

A group us (Peter, Claire, Teresa, Karen, Brett, me) had a fun day out climbing the Tooth South Face. We left the TH before 7am and found snow from Source Lake to the pass. The rope teams were quick and the first team made the summit in around two hours. The rappels were smoothly. We let a solo climber rap down on our ropes to let him (Chris) get off quickly. We had a strong and quick party and were able to make it back to the North Bend Bar and Grill for dinner and beverages by 5:30pm. Pics Tooth South Face.

On Sat Ed, Dan and I signed in at the ranger station in Randle and were greeted with “are you really going to climb” … 1^st sign :-) We got stopped a bunch of miles from the trail head by deep snow on road and a large tree across the road … 2^nd sign :-)  We also got Ed’s Subaru stuck in the snow … 3^rd sign :-) … a great start to the weekend.

We then hiked on road/skinned on patched of snow/carried skis on bare road/skinned up for about 10 miles. About 7:30pm we made camp, had dinner and decided not to summit as the team was exhausted and had not reached the high camp yet. It was little early season as the snow level was too low and increases the length of the approach.

This morning we skinned up another 1000'+ to high camp including some stuff on high angle terrain. I never knew that on skis+ski-crampons that is was possible to go up such steep terrain. We had a better views of the N-Face of the NW Ridge Adams. Adams Glacier looks like a great blocky ice climb. N-Face NW Ridge looks like a long 2000+ feet smooth face. Both look fun.

We then skied down some nice slopes and traversed. We then followed a couple of heavily snowed over creek drainages which made for quick downhill travel. Entered dense trees and had fun skiing between the dense trees and tree wells which was a first and fun for me. We eventually made it back down to the road and ski/glided/poled along the road for a bunch of miles. We took a 0.25mil shortcut and bushwhacked which saved us 1.5 miles on the road. After another 0.75mi we need made it back to the car.

A fun weekend. Pics here.

On Sunday Garett and I decided to do a walk from Paradise to Muir. It was his first time up there. Click here for pics.

We left Seattle at 5:15pm and found no traffic on 405 or 167. With a mandatory Starbucks stop in Puyallup for a coffee we arrived at Paradise at 7:50am and left promptly at 8am with occasionally rain droplets.  I had skis and Garett had my snowshoes (see below). It was good to see a couple of friends (Dan, Rod, Josh, Max) who were instructing and leading the Mountaineers Snow 2/Crevasse rescue field trip.

The snow up  to  base of Panorama Point was good and I was looking forward to the ride down. I removed the skis and booted it up and over Panorama point. I have been looking for Dynafit ski crampons for 2 months now. I guess I will have to keep looking.

Once past the two to three little bumps after Panorama Point the skis were back on and we proceeded up.  The precip was turning to light snow and the wind was picking up around 20mph with visibility around 50 yards. Around half an inch of fresh snow over a hard icy surface.

We broke through the clouds around 8500’ into blue sky and sunshine. Just fantastic views! No fresh snow on the ground just a super hard surface.

We arrived at Muir at 12:15pm and had lunch, chatted with the RMI folk, took pics and  watched Mt Adams and Mt St Helens poking through the cloud layer.  Around 1pm we headed down. Me on skis and Garett running down …. on snowshoes. He is a runner in really good shape and hence we stayed together. At times I had to catch up with him J

The snow above the clouds was still hard and made for interesting skiing. However once we hit the cloud layer which had been rising, the surface turned to about an inch of fresh. Fantastic skiing. Around 8000 feet the snow was frozen solid and visibility was down to 2 yards. We proceeded with caution following ski+boot tracks and monitoring my GPS. Visibility opened up to around 25 yards at Pebble Creek. From the base of Panaroma Point the snow was soft and great for skiing. Back at Paradise by 3pm.

Garett and I stopped in Puyallup for dinner and were home by 6pm. A great day.