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Fuhrer Finger, June 25-26


TeleRoss

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This trip almost didn't even get off the ground, due to extreme foolishness on my part, when I realized as we were pulling into Longmire at 7:30am Wednesday morning, that I had forgotten my tele boots all the way back in my apartment in Seattle. Oh S*@T!! was all I could think...Fortunately a family member who fortunately had nothing else to do that morning saved the day and picked up the boots and met us(Alex and I) back in Graham and made the drop...

Anyway, with boots now in hand we hightailed it back to the Christine Falls TH, and began hiking at about 12:30. hiked up past Comet Falls and up to Van Trump Park and out of treeline and into the baking sun. I booted and Alex skinned all the way to camp at ~9200' on the W. side of the Wilson Gl. Made camp at 6:30, and made dinner and discussed the route and made our gear arrangements. Wake up call at 12:30am, and out of camp at 1:45.

Under a perfectly starry night made our way across the Wilson Gl. to the bottom of the Fuhrer Finger. Climbing the finger was straight foreward with some sections of extremely large suncups, which while not hindering climbing, we were a little concerned with them for the ski down. As the sky began to lighten from the approaching sunrise the outline of some large seracs of the looming Nisqually Glacier became visible above and to our right. The scene was awesome. As we continued higher and higher we encountered one steep pitch with some exposure, just above 12000' and right against the rocks separating the finger from the Wilson Headwall. Negotiated this section and broke out onto smooth relatively lower angled slopes near the top of the Wilson Headwall. and finally after many exhausting hours of climbing, reached Columbia Crest at 9:15, under crystal clear skies and a fairly stout breeze. We paused for a photo break and rolled out the sleeping bags for a quick nap to recoup for the ski down.

Started the descent at 12:15..Descended perfect corn on the upper Nisqually Glacier, with the top 1000v.f. or so being completely unbroken. Then negotiated some crevasses down to 12000' where we broke east and onto the top of the Fuhrer Finger. Here we began to encounter some of those large suncups, and even though softened by the sun, still made the skiing conditions less than ideal. There were some great turns about halfway down the finger, and then the best turns were below and skiers left of the hourglass, on the last little pitch before skiing onto the Wilson Glacier.

An awesome ski with some great turns and some really crappy turns, but an awesome ascent and descent, especially among the large crevasses and seracs of the upper Nisqually, the immensity of the features are truely humbling, and beautiful.

Anyway, back at camp around 1:30 we crashed out for a couple of hours. Made dinner around 4:30, and then organized our gear for the ski down on Friday morning. However, as we were lounging around the tent at 7pm, realizing that we had absolutely nothing to do, and would probably wake at 3am if we went to bed, made an impromptu decision to strike camp an beeline it to the car.

Had our packs loaded and ready to go at 7:30, and skied some of the best snow of the day down to Van Trump Park in beautiful evening light. Skied down a creek drainage to the bitter end of the snow, and hiked down through the forest to find the Chrisine Falls trail, just near Comet Falls. A quick dash down the trail put us at the truck at 9:00.

The Fuhrer Finger is still in good climbing condition, but the skiing conditions are far from ideal.

Some pics are up in the gallery.

-Ross

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