So being the busy guy that he is, we decided to “book a date” and cross our fingers for good weather and conditions. Low and behold, July 10th & 11th turned out be sunny and hot, so we packed the car and threw Craig’s brother, Keith, in for good measure. I was fairly certain Keith could keep up, even with his fat skis, because the last time I went for a road bike ride with him we were hammering up hills after 200km, so I guess he’s got some endurance. We spent the night on a gravel road to a Christian camp outside of Morton, WA and woke up to some epic views of Mount Rainier, which I enjoyed for a good 30 seconds before my eyes swelled up thanks to some sort of allergic reaction to the pollen in the area. I rummaged through my backpack and found one old Reactine pill, which I promptly took.
Since my eyes felt like angry sandpaper and I didn’t want to wait around I woke the brothers up and we packed up camp and headed to Morton for some tasty breakfast, which gave my eyes time to recover.
After stocking up with some food and more Reactine from the Morton IGA we made our way through the well-maintained maze of forest service roads to the Killen Creek Trailhead.
We somehow managed to start the hike in by 10:30am, and within an hour we’d hit snow and quickly lost the trail. Oh well, I guess we should go up.
We made camp up around 6800’ near “high camp” on some nice dirt campsite, and went for a warm-up run:
I also took this time to show Keith how to self arrest, so if we hit some nasty crud on the way down the NFNWR he’d be able to stop himself before tomahawking the whole thing. Then we skied some nice corn with Mt. Saint Helens in the background
and some sticky slush back to camp.
The next day we woke up at 5am, took one look at the face, realized it’d be icy as [insert curse here] and hit the snooze button till 7am. By the time we left camp just before 8, the face was starting to get a bit of sun and would hopefully not be a sheet of ice.
Keith at the bottom of the route, starting to climb:
Thanks to some skiers from the day before it was pretty easy to recognize the best way to get onto the face from the Adams Glacier.
For most of the climb we took turns kicking steps since foot penetration was a little more than I’d hoped for, but atleast crampons weren’t needed and I could save my pants from further unneeded ventilation. Then we found a nice flat spot to have some lunch:
We ran out of water 2/3 of the way up thanks to the solar radiation that was quickly turning our crust to corn and we had to stop to melt some snow. I filled my water and started to boot pack while the brothers melted more water for themselves. Near the top I thought it’d be fun to try to climb a strip of “snow” through a rockband that looked a bit steeper. Once I got near the top of it, I realized that the last 10 feet were solid ice, and I was standing on an inch or so of crumbling snow on top of ice. My mind quickly turned to the nice thought of my crampons, which were safely stuffed away in my pack. Sweet. I down climbed a bit and went through a bigger gap in the rocks, which wasn’t as steep or as icy. A trip isn’t a trip without atleast a bit of my stupidity coming through.
We ran into some other groups that had climbed the NW Ridge near the top and chatted a bit. Then we strapped our skis on and started our descent from the Pinnacle.
I quickly found out that tele turns above 12,000 feet make you a lot more tired than they do lower down, and managed to tire myself out before we even got to the fun part. Skiing off the top, all you could see was the bottom of the Adams Glacier thousands of feet below, and the snow maybe 20 meters infront of you, as the slope gradually steepend
This just made me more excited to get to “the goods”
We had beautiful corn the whole way down. Which led to sensory overload, and I’m pretty sure I skied in my pants.
Near the bottom it started to get steep
And the snow got a bit heavier. So it started to sluff "just a bit". We shot back through the gap onto the Adams glacier, skied the last bit of fun, and found ourselves back on a much flatter world than we’d gotten used to. Our sluff from the run was still cascading down the route and falling over the terminal cliff and into the bergschrund.
Craig and Keith… pinching themselves:
We skied some sticky snow back to camp, packed up, and followed someone’s tracks back down, who luckily had a better sense of direction than we did.
Thanks Craig and Keith. That was sweet. Definitely a classic.
