With an unprecedented heat wave hitting the Pacific Northwest, it seemed one place to escape the heat was up high. Temperatures were expected to reach crazy levels on Sunday and Monday, so Colin and I decided to go for a single-day ascent of the Emmons, leaving the car earlier than I ever had before—10pm on Friday night.
It wasn’t quite fully dark when we started off, which started the surreal experience. Thankfully, the temperature was pleasant at that time and the moon was full, bathing the mountain in soft, white light and making the glaciers pop against a darkening night sky.
We made it to the moraine at the base of the Interglacier in about 1h and 40min and decided to take a 20-minute nap there since we were ahead of schedule. I drifted off for a few minutes after taking in the starry sky.
We left our trail runners on the moraine and put on our skis. The snow had firmed back up, but wasn’t icy, which led to pretty efficient skinning. From the base of the moraine, we made it to Camp Curtis in about 2h 20min. The descent down to the lower Emmons Glacier was partially dry. We roped up there and were able to easily follow the cattle path around large crevasses to Camp Schurman about 6h after we’d left the car.
We were able to skin quite a ways up the Emmons, through most of The Corridor to about 11,500 feet. The rest of our ascent was straightforward with skis on our backs, booting up at a measured (and slowing) pace. The bergschrund was open across the face, but still a small enough gap that we could reach over and make a big high step to cross the chasm. The route topped out on the crater a little ways away from the summit and we decided it was worth walking over without our packs. We arrived as the only ones at the top at 10:45am, just shy of 13 hours after we’d started. The wind was ripping as usual up there and I had a bit of a headache from the altitude, so we didn’t stay long.
As my friend Dale says, “volcanoes are for skiing.” We clicked in on the crater rim and proceeded to enjoy somewhat-heavy corn skiing right from the top. “Hucking our meat” over the small vertical bergschrund gap was pretty fun. It only took an hour and a bit to get back to Camp Schurman. We rested a bit and chatted up the climbing rangers there before heading down the lower Emmons, booting up to Camp Curtis, and then getting our second ski run in down the Interglacier. It was nearly 1pm at the top of the Interglacier and we were nervous it would be a mashed potato mess, but it ended up being the best corn skiing of the day. We passed a number of conga lines of parties headed up as we whooped our way down.
We were able to ski all the way to our shoes at 6,100 feet and it only took 20 minutes to ski the whole thing. The hike out in short shorts was not as painful as I’d expected it to be and we made it to the car at about 3pm. The timing of the whole trip felt surreal—there was still a lot of day left. We weren’t trying to rush and our time at a little over 17 hours certainly wasn’t breaking any records, but it was fun to go fast(er) and light and experience the whole mountain in a day once again (see my Liberty Ridge Car to Car trip report here).