Trip: Little Tahoma (Troubles spotted on DC) - East Shoulder

Date: 7/28/2007

Trip Report:
To celebrate my birthday I day-climbed 11,138 foot Little Tahoma peak in Mount Rainier National Park solo. Doing this trip in a day involves roughly 14 miles (roundtrip) of hiking and about 7,300’ of elevation gain/loss. Doing it solo requires care and consideration and if you spend any time on the summit at all you are looking at about 12 hours car to car. From Seattle it took about two hours to drive to the Wonderland Trail’s Fryingpan Creek trailhead in the National Park where I sorted through my gearbag and finally hit the trail at 7am.

Once up at Summerland meadows/campground I departed the Wonderland trail on the sketchy climber’s route that heads directly up a ridge towards Meany Crest. Bypassing the few remaining snowfields I followed the Meany Crest ridgeline up to the climber’s camp at the edge of the Fryingpan Glacier. From there it was a fairly straightforward 2-mile upwards snowslog towards Mt Rainier to reach the loose-rock 9000’ saddle crossing between the Fryingpan and Whitman glaciers. There are several crevasse crossings on the Fryingpan that will require special consideration before too long. Here’s a shot of Little Tahoma and the upper section of the snowfinger from the saddle:



Although there is still a nice layer of snow all the way on the Whitman I put on the crampons for the traverse and Little Tahoma snowfinger climb since the layer is relatively thin and the climbing angle increases substantially. Bypassing crevasses at the foot of the snowfinger was no problem but there was constant rolling rock rockfall. About halfway up the snowfinger the angle increased again and near the top I kicked into what may be a bergshrund but I quickly moved higher without incident. Otherwise, the route is still in great shape for this late in the season. In fact, if you prefer a dusty & chossy loose-rock scramble you can avoid most of the upper snowfinger altogether by slipping and sliding along the northerly side of the finger. The loose-rock class 3 gully that leads towards the summit starts near the top of the snowfinger on its southerly side and I made quick progress to the summit. The final traverse to the summit-proper is superbly airy as you cross a narrow notch, looking thousands of feet straight down to the massive glacier far below, but I found the rock to be fairly solid in most places so it wasn't a problem. Here’s the view of Mount Rainier from the top of Little Tahoma:



So the view of Mt. Rainier from the top of Little Tahoma is pretty spectacular, but while checking out the climbers established boot path top-to-bottom and watching climbers descend I discovered that groups were for some reason avoiding the Disappointment Cleaver altogether. Instead, they were taking a difficult and sketchy bypass directly down the Emmons along the north side of the Cleaver, then rounding the bottom of the Cleaver, and then climbing back up to Ingraham Flats on the south side of the Cleaver. This is surprising because recent reports (ranger and climber) on the DC route have been saying it is good, but there were clearly some major problems over there on Saturday July 28th. I spotted two climbers at the top of the Cleaver approaching the area where a horizontal ladder had been installed in recent weeks to bridge a crevasse but I did not see them successfully cross through the area. Here’s a look at the top-of-the-cleaver area - you can see the two climbers (just right of center) just above the broken up mess on the DC route at the top of the cleaver:



The descent down the Emmons for the large guided groups looked painfully slow and tedious. It was rather remarkable that there was a lot of traffic still trying to reach Ingraham Flats between 2pm and 3pm. So I'm thinking something must have happened along the DC route during the day to make it impassable, probably at the top of the Cleaver but possibly on the Ingraham-Cleaver traverse as well which has been deteriorating. Here’s a shot of the Ingraham Flats climbers camp (left-center) and the general Disappointment Cleaver access/bypass area:



The bypass under the DC to the Emmons that I saw yesterday is rough, demanding, and represents a long detour. I wonder if the DC is truly finished for the season and saw no one on the Cleaver itself all afternoon long. In contrast, my own descent of Little Tahoma through increasing swirling clouds and fog was relatively rapid and uneventful; although no sooner had I stepped back onto the Fryingpan than I heard the most massive rockfall I have heard in a long time echo from somewhere back on the Whitman side of the gap. I leave you with this shot of the Emmons-side of the detour going under the DC. Look closely and you’ll spot climbers all along this un-established bypass. The three climbers just rounding the bottom of the DC at the bottom left were heading up in the late afternoon for some reason. At the upper right is a line of about 12 climbers. There are 3 climbers crossing a difficult icefall on the bypass, upper-middle right:





Gear Notes:
Helmet, crampons, axe.

Approach Notes:
Via Wonderland trail, Summerland, Meany Crest, Fryingpan, Whitman

From what the rangers stated, the series of ladders that were put in place at the top of the cleaver melted out. The new variation should noe be well marked with a solid boot pack. It will add a little more to the climb though, roughly an extra hour. I'm sure others will post on this issue also.

Wow, thanks for the beta

Very nice shots BlackHawk! Quite the vantage point for this weekend's activity. I can't wait to check the pics out more carefully b/c we had a group of five on this variation. We found it to be nothing like Organ Donor's post of "It will add a little more to the climb though, roughly an extra hour."

From above the Flats you will lose about 600' of gain. (You actually need to descend from a couple hundred feet above the Flats.) The route takes a descending traverse beneath the DC and the icefall bordering it on the lower RHS; this part is straightforward and wanded.

One problem is encountered soon after turning up the Emmons: the route crosses over some steep seracs. This appears to be the only way through in the immediate area. One of the guide services put a fixed line here, secured with pickets and srews top and bottom and several screws along it's length. This is a short bit of AI3 and it will cost people w/o steep climbing experience significant time. I belayed my group up and down it and you all know about how long that takes. Sure, you could clip the fixed line, which we also did, but I knew I was going to be above and out of sight and I didn't want to have them clipping past the gear while gripped; it seemed safer and not much slower to belay.

Another reason why this variation will cost quite a bit of time is it's very circuitous: it descends, then traverses way over towards the Emmons shoulder, then begins a long rising traverse back towards the top of the DC! Maybe you can tell from the pics whether this is really necessary; it would obviously be best to ascend to the climbers right.

Also, reportedly at about 13K there is another wide crevasse bridged by a ladder that people are belaying across. This is a significant bottleneck that we decided to turn back before encountering, largely due to time and party energy.

BlackHawk, did you see the Chinook come in? This was mid-afternoon long after we were back at Muir. It flew overhead directly towards the summit, where it was out of view behind Cathedral Rock for some 15-20 min before making a beeline out of there. I can only think somebody took a spill on a ladder or descending through the seracs.

One more note on the fixed line through the seracs (by the way there are two but the upper one is really not necessary). On our way down the lower fixed line we found the two lower screws near the hardest moves melted out. I replaced them well; it appeared to me that they were placed in the surface ice rather than deeper into the hard blue glacial ice. They were solid when we passed them going up but they did not last long before melting out.

Undoubtedly many parties that climbed the DC came down the variation. When we were at the Flats all parties were climbing up the DC: we were the only ones to do the variation since the very early morning parties. We left Muir at 1:30 and began the variation perhaps at 3:30, after a big crampon snafu and some routefinding challenges. Seemed like the other parties on this route probably were at least a couple hours ahead of us; nobody came after us but because we pulled the plug we were the third party back down it.

I was checking out Little T all day, and wondering where the standard route originates: thanks for the great write up!

The Blackhawk was for a guy who dislocated his shoulder. Check out Mike Gauthier's blog for further info.

No, I didn't see the chopper but I heard it around 4pm and I was already back on the fryingpan. That would have been an awesome photo.....