giggy
New member
A couple of years ago, I sat camped at Camp Muir on Rainier and stared at Mt Adams thinking - that would a cool peak to head up. Since then, I was able to get a couple more volcanoes under my belt, some more technical skills, etc... Around last fall, I started asking people I knew could handle a Cascade Volcano to come along. I wanted a good mix of skills to be along in case the poop hit the fan.
At then end of the day, I decided I wanted to climb Mount Adams via the Mazama Route. Nothing against the south climb route, but I didn't want to do a snow slog the entire way and I wanted to further develop my skills in glacier navigation.
For Cascade standards, the Mazama is an "easy" route of a 12,000+ ft volcano (2nd highest in WA after Rainier) with about a 7000 elevation gain from car to summit and about half of that with 50 pound pack. While an "easy" route, it is still a glacier and still climbs up steep slopes of about 35-40 degrees - pretty much sustained for the 3+ miles from high camp to summit.
Participants:
Giggy, Arm,Skimom,Woody and his brother, Jenn, Jeff, Cbcbd, Al, and Double Bow.
Requirements; sense of humor, flexibility, strong hiking ability and willingness to forgoe any winter list bagging to be able to train as a group in the pressies. This was essential to be able to mimic the conditions of a cascade peak as much as possible. I told people right from the beginning, if you’re working a winter list, it can't interfere with any team training - basically if that was your goal, then this trip wasn't for you.
I was the organizer of this trip, but not the leader. There were people along with more climbing and glacier skills than me. That being said, we all had some technical skill and all but one had been on glaciers before. This was an "easy" glacier route - so it fit the bill perfect. I anticipated a couple of natural leaders to emerge and they did - and they did an excellent job of decision making, but at the end of the day, we all decided things together.
The trip started off rather grim with a less than ideal weather forecast which is typical of the Cascades - and then pretty much everyone was delayed getting to Seattle. We had a 3 to 4 hour drive to cascade locks on that night and we didn't get settled in until near midnight - with the time change, most of us were up for 24 hours. It was clear the 8 mile hike to high camp wasn't going to happen - had it been sunny and good weather, maybe we would have. In the meantime, we found out that the Yakima Indian Reservation was going open their road about a week early which would cut our approach to 3.3 miles (down from 8) (we would have to traverse the route from the normal trailhead had we went earlier. As out luck would have it - this coincided with 3 days of decent weather. We decided we would climb Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday. Tuesday being a "rest" day at high camp. Personally I like this approach because you can be fresh for summit day, but also just really soak in being on a beautiful big glaciated peak for an extra day. (looking back on this both, arm,cbcbc and myself were saying we probably underestimated this approach. 8 miles out west is just not the same as 8 miles out east. IMO - its alot tougher. At least on these mountains.
To kill 2 days and acclimatize a bit, we decided to head to mount hood and sleep at 6,000 ft, and make a summit attempt even though we knew weather was going to be - "not ideal". While all of this was going on - the north cascades were stormy, and we pretty much knew Mount Baker was going to be a long shot prior to the upcoming weekend. Mount Hood is another trip report and I turned back (with most others) near 10K due to whiteout - 3 others did summit and they can tell their story.
Because of this delay due to weather - Skimom, who was going to fly out and climb baker with us realized she could change her flight and join us. The only thing that sucked about this is arm needed to head back to Portland to pick her up and he would be able to hike in with us. No biggie though. They would both meet us at Sunrise Camp the next day.
So we grabbed our bluebags - and headed off!!!
........
At then end of the day, I decided I wanted to climb Mount Adams via the Mazama Route. Nothing against the south climb route, but I didn't want to do a snow slog the entire way and I wanted to further develop my skills in glacier navigation.
For Cascade standards, the Mazama is an "easy" route of a 12,000+ ft volcano (2nd highest in WA after Rainier) with about a 7000 elevation gain from car to summit and about half of that with 50 pound pack. While an "easy" route, it is still a glacier and still climbs up steep slopes of about 35-40 degrees - pretty much sustained for the 3+ miles from high camp to summit.
Participants:
Giggy, Arm,Skimom,Woody and his brother, Jenn, Jeff, Cbcbd, Al, and Double Bow.
Requirements; sense of humor, flexibility, strong hiking ability and willingness to forgoe any winter list bagging to be able to train as a group in the pressies. This was essential to be able to mimic the conditions of a cascade peak as much as possible. I told people right from the beginning, if you’re working a winter list, it can't interfere with any team training - basically if that was your goal, then this trip wasn't for you.
I was the organizer of this trip, but not the leader. There were people along with more climbing and glacier skills than me. That being said, we all had some technical skill and all but one had been on glaciers before. This was an "easy" glacier route - so it fit the bill perfect. I anticipated a couple of natural leaders to emerge and they did - and they did an excellent job of decision making, but at the end of the day, we all decided things together.
The trip started off rather grim with a less than ideal weather forecast which is typical of the Cascades - and then pretty much everyone was delayed getting to Seattle. We had a 3 to 4 hour drive to cascade locks on that night and we didn't get settled in until near midnight - with the time change, most of us were up for 24 hours. It was clear the 8 mile hike to high camp wasn't going to happen - had it been sunny and good weather, maybe we would have. In the meantime, we found out that the Yakima Indian Reservation was going open their road about a week early which would cut our approach to 3.3 miles (down from 8) (we would have to traverse the route from the normal trailhead had we went earlier. As out luck would have it - this coincided with 3 days of decent weather. We decided we would climb Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday. Tuesday being a "rest" day at high camp. Personally I like this approach because you can be fresh for summit day, but also just really soak in being on a beautiful big glaciated peak for an extra day. (looking back on this both, arm,cbcbc and myself were saying we probably underestimated this approach. 8 miles out west is just not the same as 8 miles out east. IMO - its alot tougher. At least on these mountains.
To kill 2 days and acclimatize a bit, we decided to head to mount hood and sleep at 6,000 ft, and make a summit attempt even though we knew weather was going to be - "not ideal". While all of this was going on - the north cascades were stormy, and we pretty much knew Mount Baker was going to be a long shot prior to the upcoming weekend. Mount Hood is another trip report and I turned back (with most others) near 10K due to whiteout - 3 others did summit and they can tell their story.
Because of this delay due to weather - Skimom, who was going to fly out and climb baker with us realized she could change her flight and join us. The only thing that sucked about this is arm needed to head back to Portland to pick her up and he would be able to hike in with us. No biggie though. They would both meet us at Sunrise Camp the next day.
So we grabbed our bluebags - and headed off!!!
........
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