Tahoma Glacier on Mount Rainier

July 9, 2022

The remote West side of Mount Rainier had been calling to me for years—while driving to and from Paradise and flying to and from Portland, the Tahoma Glacier appears quite majestic as it spills down from the summit, flanked by Liberty Cap and Point Success. A confluence of events aligned to make sense to give it a go with a successful trip report from 2 weeks prior, my buddy Adam being free for 3 days, and a solid forecast.

We drove down relatively early on Saturday morning to get a permit at Longmire before gearing up and starting down the gated Westside Road at 2,800 feet just before 10am. We were on the fence about skis, but decided to bring them, hoping a significant chunk of the glacier would be filled in enough to make them worth it. The party two weeks prior had been successful going up the glacier itself via Emerald Ridge instead of the Puyallup Cleaver and so we crossed our fingers this would work for us as well since it seemed more direct, would put us in the middle of the wild Tahoma Glacier, and had less road walking.

After sauntering up the road for a bit, we arrived at the old Tahoma Creek trail, which very quickly washes out. We found there’s about a mile of mandatory rock hopping on the climber’s left side of the washout before it’s possible to keep on the old trail. In just over 2 hours from the car, we reached the Wonderland Trail ~3.8 miles in, which we were pretty happy with given that we were carrying overnight gear, skis, boots, and glacier gear. After a break here, we headed up to the top of Emerald Ridge.

Things looked pretty anemic from the saddle where we left the Wonderland Trail, but thankfully there was just enough coverage in view once we reached the top of Emerald Ridge. It took us about 4.5 hours to get here from the car. We switched to pants and ski boots, quickly booted across the unsavory, dirty bottom margin of the glacier, and switched to skinning as soon as we could.

We were able to stay unroped for a good ways with most crevasses pinched down pretty well. It was only at 7,600 feet or so where we decided the gaps warranted putting on a rope. We wove our way around a bunch and then were back on an efficient course until 9,000 feet where the glacier was nice and flat and we decided to call it quits 9 hours of approaching into our day and just shy of 7pm. We dug out a nice platform with a wind break, ate dinner with a nice sunset, and conked out with alarms set for 3:15am.

We slept decently well, fueled up, and got going in the morning by 4:15am. The snow was quite firm and so we went straight to boots and crampons with skis on our backs. Through the darkest part of the morning, we thankfully had a bootpack to follow and there were some pretty huge, gaping crevasses to avoid. At about 10,500 feet, we were surrounded by big gaps and weren’t sure it would go, but found a sneaky ramp up and to our right which unlocked the puzzle. From here, we could see it was smooth sailing, albeit relatively steep with firm snow, until the high crevasses around 12,500 feet.

We plodded along, roped relatively close together with an axe in one hand and a whipped in the other for a while, closing in on 12,000 feet, until Adam turned around and said something like, “I feel kinda dizzy…like I could faint.” Being on very firm snow with a massive crevasse below us and knowing these kinds of things rarely get better with higher altitude, we decided it was best to turn around. A huge bummer, given how much energy we’d put in to get there, but the right call.

We walked down a good ways, weaving between big crevasses we could now see down into, before finding a smooth enough section to ski. Way better! We were able to ski down to the tent, where we took a nap for a little bit, packed up, and were able to ski all the way out. There was only one section where we had to slow way down and be quite careful—otherwise it was smooth sailing. We made it from our camp to the bottom of the glacier just above the top of Emerald Ridge in only 25 minutes. Magic.

From here, it was just a painful slog in our trail runners with a lot of weight on our backs. It took us 3.5 hours down from the top of Emerald Ridge to the car. While it was a bummer to not finish the end of the route, it was really cool to get onto a completely new side of the mountain and also to go up the full Tahoma Glacier. While the Puyallup Cleaver looked much more straightforward, it felt natural to head up the gut of the glacier and to test our route-finding skills. I’m sure I’ll be back for it some day…just not soon.

Squak Glacier on Mount Baker

June 25, 2022

After all these years in the Pacific Northwest and nearly 10 summits of Mount Baker, I had never been up its South side. I had no idea what I’d been missing.

Kelsey and I decided to sleep in our on beds, waking up early Saturday morning to leave town by about 4:30am. The drive was smooth other than the massive potholes on the forest road and we left the car where we had to park about a half mile below the trailhead due to snow and other cars at 6:45am. We followed the old road for a few switchbacks and then headed up through the woods, eventually meeting the trail. This section was mostly snow, but had some dry sections we had to boot. Before too long, we were in open trees and skinning our way efficiently to more open terrain at 4,600 feet.

We were generally moving pretty quickly and got to 5,900 feet where a number of tents had been set up the night before in about 2 hours 25 minutes from the car. From here, it was smooth sailing up the glacier, following a light skin track and a huge number of footprints. A bunch of large, roped parties were walking down by this point, but the snow was thankfully still relatively firm. Soft enough to skin well, but it seemed like it would stay as corn for us on the way down.

The views from this side of the mountain are really awesome—much better than from the standard Coleman-Deming route with the Twin Sisters nearby as well as a panoramic view of the Cascades from Shuksan through The Pickets, and across all the way to Glacier and Rainier.

We kept cruising at a pretty good clip, passing a handful of parties as we went and saying hello. At the edge of the summit crater, we switched to booting since it steepened up a bit and there was a massive boot pack set in already. We never roped up and didn’t need crampons either since the snow was soft. 5 hours and 20 minutes after leaving the car, I was standing on top of Baker, enjoying its stellar views. I met Kelsey at the top of the Roman Wall and, after a quick snack, we started down.

My, oh my. From the top of the Roman Wall until about 7,500 feet was, hands-down, the best corn run of my life. Perfectly smooth with just a couple inches of buttery corn on top, it skied like a dream. We stopped a few times to look at each other in disbelief and whoop.

Things got heavy again, especially for my tiny 176 x 78 under foot skis, from 7,500 feet down a couple thousand feet. We stopped for a half hour at a rock outcropping to take out boots off, soak in the sun, and eat some more food. Below here, especially as we re-entered the trees, the skiing got pretty good again. We video-gamed our way down from here, slalom turning around trees and in stream gullies, eventually making it to the car just under 8 hours after we’d left at 2:45pm.

Many Cascade mountaineering adventures have enough Type-2 fun that you’re glad you did it, but don’t really want to do it again. With this one, I’d go back for sure.

Bow-Yoho Traverse

March 16, 2022

Caitlyn was able to lock up 5 nights of hut reservations for the Bow-Yoho Traverse during COVID when the huts were being restricted to a single party at a time. I was thrilled to get an invite to join her and 6 others for a nice-sized party of 8 to spend 5 days exploring the Wapta Icefield and evirons.

None of us had been in the area before and we hoped for spring-like conditions, blue bird skies, and low avalanche danger. We weren’t sure how prepared to be for the crevasses and any technical terrain for side summit objectives, so we ended up bringing what ended up being extra weight (aluminum crampons, light axes, a few pickets, etc.).

Unfortunately, the weather and conditions didn’t quite line up with our hopes. We were in a whiteout across the Wapta and otherwise had limited visibility with high avalanche danger and a good amount of new snow to break trail through. Regardless, it was a good experience with a really strong, positive crew and nice to be fully off the grid for the better part of a week.

Day 1 - Bow Lake to Bow Hut

We had all arrived in Lake Louise the evening before and so our first day was pretty simple. With three cars, we dropped off five of us at Bow Lake while three members of the group graciously ran two cars to the exit. From Bow Lake to the Bow Hut is a short 4.5 miles with only about 2,000 feet of elevation gain, which we did with our heaviest packs starting the trip in just over 2.5 hours. We caught glimpses of views, but it was snowing and pretty socked in. After getting fires going in the Bow hut and setting up shop, we went for some short laps just above the hut in the afternoon. The hut was plenty cozy, with a nice kitchen and living area on one wing and a sleeping room on the other.

Day 2 - Bow Hut to Guy Hut

Best visibility of the day, headed up the icefall toward Mount Collie

We awoke with grand plans to ski Mount Gordon on our way, but as soon as we had ascended to the Wapta plateau from the Bow Hut, it was clear we were going to spend our day in a whiteout. We adjusted course and spent the day rotating different rope teams in the front with the leader breaking trail and trying to go straight while the person behind them watched the GPS and suggested they bend left or right a bit. Turns in the front were vertigo-inducing and odd—we each saw features that didn’t exist like cliffs or rises in the snow. It was a real bummer to spend hours in the most jaw-dropping terrain of the traverse without seeing anything, but that’s just how it goes sometimes. We successfully navigated the icefall up toward Mount Collie and then down the gentle slope from its saddle toward the Guy Hut. The final section along the ridge to the Guy Hut was tricky to navigate safely with such low visibility, but we eventually made our way just above the hut and noticed some cairns that helped us avoid descending too far. This day took us right around 6 hours. The Guy Hut was awesome—brand new and warm when we arrived. Our only debacle there was needing to replace a poop barrel, including chopping the top off a “shitcicle” to cover the barrel.

Awkwardly skinning downhill, nearing the Guy Hut

Day 3 - Guy hut adventures

The sunniest point of the trip, heading back up to the Guy Hut

Climbing back up to the Guy Hut after some laps on the glacier

Mont des Poilus looked like a fun objective during our pre-trip planning, but considerable avalanche danger and minimal visibility continued on our third day, so we instead toured up the glacial valley just West of the Guy hut to the saddle between Mond des Poilus and Mount Collie and did a couple laps there on lower-angle terrain before sliding down our skin track magic carpet ride back toward the Guy Hut, then ascending up the ridge from the hut to the summit of Yoho Peak. The ski down Yoho’s North Face was the best skiing of the trip. I bit the bullet and went first in flat light and low visibility, which was fine until it wasn’t, resulting in one pretty spectacular submarined tip wipeout. With glacier glasses wet from that crash, I didn’t see a wind lip while carrying speed to get across a traverse on the last bit to the hut and took another tumble, effectively front flipping into a split with my right leg outstretched. I felt my right hamstring partially tear and the subsequent pain was pretty real. In the very center of a 5-day traverse was not a great place for this. Oof. The team did a great job of feeding me whiskey and playing some fun games in the hut that night to take my mind off it.

Day 4 - Guy hut to Stanley Mitchell Hut

The only warm seat in the Stanley Mitchell Hut

We decided as a group that the direct path via Isolated Col was too risky with considerable avalanche danger (influenced partly by some guides we had talked to on day 1 who had recommended against this route) and so we opted for the Whaleback alternative route instead. I was nervous about my hamstring and not sure how it would hold up. Thankfully I was able to ski gingerly and the initial descent from the Guy Hut was mostly a traverse, seeking to coast as far as we could. We made it to about halfway across the frozen moraine lake at the toe of Glacier des Poilus before switching to skins.

Again, thankfully, skinning on relatively flat terrain wasn’t too bad and I was able to keep up with the group as we traversed our way toward the shoulder of Whaleback without incident. There were some big cornices on Whaleback threatening some of our traverse, but we picked a shallow-angled path and scooted across it quickly. The ski down from the shoulder of Whaleback near the summer trail with heavy snow and tight trees was the toughest part for my leg. Thankfully Kelsey and Lizzy offered to side-slip sections to make it a bit easier on me and I made it with some lip biting.

From there, it was an easy skin up the trail to the Stanley Mitchell Hut, which was a very different accommodation from the brand new, flagship Guy Hut, but charming in its own way (albeit cold—the fireplace seemed to defy thermodynamics). This day took us about 4.5 hours. I stuck to the cabin for the afternoon to tend the fire and ice my leg while the rest of the crew did some laps nearby. It was a much colder night than in the other huts, but a 30-degree sleeping bag ended up being a doable, light choice for this trip.

Day 5 - Stanley Mitchell Hut to the Highway

Having made it through the prior day, I knew at this point that I could get myself out to the car. A few members of the group headed up to the President-Vice President Col early in the morning and enjoyed the ski down before rendezvousing with us, packing up, and beginning the long slog out. I’d been really excited about summiting the President and/or Vice President before the trip, but it just wasn’t in the cards. We skinned from the cabin down until the angle steepened above Laughing Falls where we ripped skins and I gingerly made my way down. We got suckered too far right near the falls and had to do a steep traverse back left near the bottom, but it otherwise went smoothly enough. From there, we were on the road for a really long ways. The valley and views were quite pretty and we had the best visibility of the trip, which helped us get through the slog. This day took a little over 5.5 hours.

I wish we’d had better visibility, lower avalanche danger, and that I hadn’t hurt myself, but you can’t always get what you want. It was great to spend some time in a new area with some great folks. I was glad to check out Lake Louise and Banff for the first time on the way home as well. I’ll be back! Time to rest and rehab this situation…