Has anyone seen this yet?

http://county5.blogspot.com/2012/06/liberty-ridge.html

holy crap that was the coolest thing ive ever seen on this here internet site!

That is not something you see every day. Hard of fathom.

Wow! I saw the biggest avalanche that I've ever seen live rip down Thermogenesis last year when I was up on Lib Ridge...Hat's off to these dudes, that's something else...won't catch me doing that one though...wowzers

That was my thought as well. When I did Lib Ridge the Willis Wall never stopped avalanching.

awesome !!

baller!

wow

Isn't Thermogenesis on the other side of Lib Ridge from the line these guys skied? further left of that?

Skiing Lib Ridge is badass. My friend David lost an edge and fell to his death while trying to ski it about 15 years ago.

Although that is a crazy and sick ski descent, it is definitely not Thermogenesis. It is some random un-named line off of Liberty Ridge.

Their line == not Thermogenesis:


Thermogenesis is just out of that picture to looker's left. It is the obvious deep couloir visible in their previous image:


See the route photos on p.204 and 207 of Mount Rainier: A Climbing Guide (2nd ed, 2005) by Mike Gauthier, which should make things quite clear.

The blog post correctly makes no mention of "Thermogenesis", so the two who skied it must know it is a different line. They should give it some cool name! Their line actually looks safer than Thermogenesis, since it is less exposed to the overhanging ice cliff and serac falls from it.

Wow - big balls on the walls. Amar is correct about the line they are one couloir over from Thermogenesis but it would appear that the lower section is in common as they state "Once through the couloir we traversed above cliffs and into the choke where we would be exposed to rock and icefall." I would interpret the choke to be the hourglass on Thermogenesis. That said, a gnarly descent.

You guys beat me to posting this here! Thanks for posting the photos detailing where we actually skied. Anyone know of a previous descent?

It is correct that we did not ski Thermogenesis although the base of the couloir does put you into Thermo. We were able to negotiate this quickly and both felt pretty good about it although it was a little nerve racking.

The bergschrund at the bottom was a different story - although I think we were still relatively protected it was quite stressful making our rap anchor there.

Was told by someone that I should get a hold of Lowell Skoog as he is the keeper of ski descents in the Cascades. Anyone know how to contact him?

Hi Oliver,

I saw this TR yesterday, which led me to your blog post. So, I think I've got most of the information I need. If you'd like to send other details, my email address is lowell.skoog AT alpenglow.org. I'd be particularly interested in the exact dates of your descents of both Nisqually Icefall and the recent Liberty Ridge route. I haven't heard of other ski descents of either route.

Congratulations on the Liberty Ridge descent. I watched your video and it looks like you had amazingly good snow conditions. Amar suggested that you should make up a cool name for it. A prosaic name might be "Liberty Ridge East." But if you wanted to get clever, how about "Cryogenesis?" (Sort of a companion to Thermogenesis....)

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At the risk of being morbid, I think your descent route was the line of David Persson's fatal fall in 1999, which Drew (G-spotter) mentioned above:

http://alpenglow.org/ski-history/notes/book/harlin-2001.html#harlin-2001-p113

Excellent job, fellas.

Sky did a similar line to this a few years back. I just can't quite tell the difference between the two descents though, any ideas?

I'm pretty sure the route Sky did was the one first skied by Chris Landry in 1980 and done by several other parties since then. That route descends the upper ridge on the east side of the crest, then crosses to the west side of the crest above Thumb Rock. The descent continues down NW-facing slopes between the crest of the ridge and Liberty Wall. You can see a topo of it here (3rd photo on page):

http://www.alpenglow.org/ski-history/topos/mt-rainier.html



By contrast, the route in Oliver's blog post stays on the east side of the ridge the entire time. It descends between the crest and the Thermogenesis gully, which it joins near the bottom.

Congrats on a beautiful descent, Oliver.

Lowell is correct about the line Casey and I skied.

Lowell,

It looks like we skied the Nisqually Icefall on May 1, 2008. Our Liberty Ridge descent was May 15, 2012. We did have great conditions, which made it all possible.

I like your cryogenesis idea for a name but I'll have to check with Aaron first.

Thanks for your help! If you need anything else please let me know.

Oliver

oliverdeshler@gmail.com

I've updated the topos for both Liberty Ridge and the south side of Mt Rainier on my website:

http://www.alpenglow.org/ski-history/topos/mt-rainier.html

Since the photo I posted above is linked to alpenglow.org, the new topo shows up here. Let me know if you see any errors.

I typically update my chronologies in the autumn (in one big batch) so that part of my website won't change right away.