Fuhrer Thumb on Mount Rainier

May 12, 2019

Owen flew up to Seattle from San Francisco on Friday night since he couldn’t join for the next international adventure with Dale to follow our recent success on New Zealand’s Aoraki Mount Cook together. We spent a very long time on Friday night trying to decide what to do. The venn diagram of routes I haven’t yet done, open access roads, things that would be safe with hot temperatures, and desire for something moderately technical proved to be too challenging. We gave up close to midnight and decided in the morning to head down to Rainier. With the White River and Spray Park access points still closed, we headed to Paradise with options to do the Wilson Headwall, Fuhrer Thumb, or Kautz Glacier.

After packing, provisioning, hitting some serious traffic to enter the park, and registering, we left the car at 2pm. It was hot and we decided to go in shorts. Post holing was pretty frustrating at times, but not as painful as we thought it might be. Owen hadn’t brought skis as he needed to head straight to a conference on Sunday night from Seattle, so we watched skiers in envy as they floated on top of the slush.

The approach went smoothly, without ever feeling like we needed to rope up, and we got to camp on the Wapowety Cleaver at about 6:30pm. It was a party up there, with tents and people everywhere. We found the last flat camp spot and set up shop, enjoying some freeze-dried dinners and whiskey before heading to bed around 9pm. We had scoped out the routes before going to bed and felt like there was likely too much objective hazard on the Wilson Headwall—the hanging seracs had recently shed some pretty large chunks down the Wilson. We decided to have a look in the morning, with the Fuhrer Thumb as our likely route choice. Regardless, we were excited to leave camping gear down low and descend the Fuhrer Finger rather than carrying over.

We woke up at 2:15am and left the tent by 3am. We got into the middle of the Wilson Glacier and headed up to the base of the Wilson Headwall. There was debris everywhere and we quickly decided to head for the Thumb. With a big crevasse guarding the entrance, we were able to cut through at the far left and then traverse in. The couloir went smoothly with no rockfall that early in the morning and we reached the convergence of the Thumb and Finger at 5:15am or so when the sun started rising.

The rest of the route went quite smoothly in a cool ambiance surrounded by crevasses and seracs, but with a clear passage right through the middle of them all. We slogged our way up, reaching the summit crater at 9:30am. The wind was ripping up there, so we took a break in a steam vent for a few minutes. Sitting down felt awesome.

The way down went. Thankfully, the snow was soft enough in many places to plunge step rather than edge in crampons. Regardless, it was very sad to watch skiers fly by us. I’m sure they felt some serious pity, especially lower down where the snow had corned up perfectly. Oh well. I’d skied the Finger before.

We arrived back at our tent just shy of 1pm and took an hour nap. Dale had appropriately dubbed this camp spot the “Napowety Cleaver” during our prior jaunt up the Finger and the name still held. I felt much better afterwards. We packed up and headed down by 2:30pm or so and made it to the car after signing out by 4:30pm.

Great adventure with Owen and my 8th time up “the big one.”

Skiing down beneath Colfax Peak’s icefall

Coleman-Deming on Mount Baker

May 4, 2019

Colin and Jen were headed up for Jen’s first time on Baker this weekend and I decided to tag along. We drove up Friday night pretty late, arriving just below the trailhead at midnight. A 5am wakeup had us moving at about 5:30am in trail runners with skis and boots on our backs.

The road had some snow on it, but much of the trail was bare or too patchy to skin, so we were glad to wear shoes until the normal clearing at the base of Heliotrope Ridge where we switched to skis. It was icy enough in the early morning that we needed ski crampons to get up the ridge, but things softened quickly in the sun and we took the ski crampons off after gaining the ridge.

We took a direct line through the flat camp area while most folks were going high—this saved us some time. We were at the saddle at about 9:45am and switched to boots and crampons here as the ridge looked pretty icy and not worth skinning. This was the right call. I put my head down through the Roman Wall and got to the summit at 11:30am on the dot. I’d gone quickly enough that I decided to wait for Colin and Jen so we could ski down together, but got cold up there in increasing winds, so I skied down to the saddle to wait in a warmer spot, running into them on the way and letting them know.

The Roman Wall was pretty icy up high for the first 500 feet or so, but then softened up a little bit and was more enjoyable. Skiing from the saddle down to our shoes was much more fun, particularly in the middle where there was a great corn harvest. It got a bit wet and heavy down low, but never terrible, even with my matchstick 78-waist skis. The hike out went easily and we were back at the car around 3:30pm.

Lane Peak’s North Face with Lover’s Lane coming up from the bottom left

Lover's Lane on Lane Peak

April 28, 2019

With some colder weather, consolidated spring snow following a warm spell, and a short weather window, I talked Colin into heading down to Rainier and getting on one of the couloirs of Lane Peak. When we got to the Narada Falls parking lot on Sunday morning at about 9:15am, I scoped out the face with some binoculars and it seemed like Lover’s Lane would go.

We hiked up the steep face to the road, went around to the bend, descended through the trees, and were at the base of the North face in about 35 minutes. We put crampons on and racked up on the flat before heading up the slope towards our couloir.

The snow was nice and firm, but still gave a little for steps. Since Colin is getting used to more wintery routes, we decided to rope up and throw in some protection along the way. Where the couloir necked down, I found a cam on the left and proceeded to put in one piece every 20 meters or so in order to always have one thing on our doubled-in-half 60m twin rope. The conditions were so much fun that I let out some whoops and was having a grand time. At the high constriction, there was even enough ice to pop in a screw and we got full swings into the neve above for another 50 feet or so.

At the top of the couloir, I descended to the far side and put Colin on belay from the tree anchor. We did the double rope rap down into The Zipper and then soloed up to the top of it quickly, doing our best Ueli Steck impressions. From there, we curled around to the South side and followed the gully to the top, where we ate our lunch and watched the clouds roll in.

The descent went smoothly and we were back at the car about 4h 45m after we’d started. Really fun climb in great condition right now.