jiri Posted July 1 Posted July 1 Trip: Mount Rainier - Emmons CentralTrip Date: 06/30/2025Trip Report: When looking at Emmons from Sunrise, Andrew got the idea of trying a route that would connect with a feature similar to the Emmon-Winthrop route corridor but positioned in the middle of the expansive glacier. This feature starts around 10k and provides easy direct access to the upper mountain. I was skeptical about the idea until I had a closer look myself a few weeks ago while climbing Cowlitz Chimney. We could not find any information about this route and decided to refer to it as Emmons Central. Please, let us know if you know the history or previous ascents. To spice things up Adrew pitched starting the glacier terminus. We scouted access to the moraine Saturday afternoon and took closeup picture of the route to weight our options. The pictures did not show any clear paths to the corridor but the “right” side variation looked the most promising. Sun morning, we hiked and shwacked to the terminus and started making our way up the glacier. The idea was to skirt very broken up lower section on the right, then hook left trying to ascend to a rocky ridge in the middle of the glacier. We could then follow the ridge for a little bit until being able to push right to access the start of the corridor. We identified one potential make-it-or-break-it crevasse below the rocky ridge but did not see any clear dead ends along this option. After leaving the moraine and getting on snow we started aiming for a nunatak at 9400 following open slopes with minimal crevasse issues. From here we initiated our left hook as the glacier became more broken up. After some navigation we reached the crevasse with a question mark and were able to get across on an exposed but solid bridge far left. This brought us to the rocky ridge where we set up the camp at exactly 10080ft. Being in the middle of a glacier with the largest area in the contiguous US and having dry ground to sit on was awesome. Looking up from camp revealed crevasse problems we did not see in the pictures. The general plan was to keep going right and that is exactly what we did in the darkness the following day. It was obvious when we finally gained the ramp because there were no crevasses in sigh as far as the headlamps could shine. The angle starts around 40 degrees and gradually eases off with elevation as it trends slightly left. Around 12.5k the route connects with the late season DC route variation. To our luck we ran into set of boot prints around this elevation. Later on the boot path became marked with wands so my guess is that the guides or rangers prepared the route for when the regular DC gets too broken up. We followed the boot prints and wands until connecting with the regular DC and the well beaten path to the summit. We descended via the standard Emmons-Winthrop route. Gear Notes: picketsApproach Notes: Moraine trail to "End of maintained trail" sign then follow a boot path down. We then hiked along the vegeration up until it looked more open 3 1 Quote
Kameron Posted July 3 Posted July 3 Cool route, especially the camp spot. It looks like about what these guys skied this spring: https://turns-all-year.com/trip-reports/emmons-glacier-to-terminus-mt-rainier Quote
JasonG Posted July 3 Posted July 3 Super cool to have solitude on that side! Thanks for the report.... Quote
Fairweather Posted July 6 Posted July 6 Outstanding! Just when you think there's nothing new under the sun, someone like you goes out and finds it! Quote
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