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.