TeleRoss Posted February 13, 2004 Share Posted February 13, 2004 (edited) Climb: Mt Rainier-Kautz Headwall Date of Climb: 2/10/2004 Trip Report: Started Tues at Van Trump TH. Nearly 7,000 v.f. and 6 1/2 hours later was at camp on Wapowety Cleaver. Beautiful day, but really warm. Shorts and tee shirt would have been nice. Got up Wed. morning and began climbing at 2:30. From camp, descended snow slope down onto the Kautz Glacier, directly below the lowest lobe of the ice cliff. From there asceded the open slope to 13,000'. Climbing was really fast and straightforeward. Right below a rock band where rock bands begin to criss cross the headwall, decided to take a rest. Dug a little platform by the rocks and just hung out and watched the most amazing sunrise, as the peaks were one by one illuminated by the sun rays...truely an awesome morning. Thought a little bit about continuing to Pt. Success, but was having such a sublime experience wathing the sunrise that I decided just to hang there for a while. Ended up sitting there for a few hours, and finally decided just to ski down. Broke camp and skied back out to the car, for nearly 10,000v.f. of skiing. Gear Notes: legs Edited February 13, 2004 by TeleRoss Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JoshK Posted February 13, 2004 Share Posted February 13, 2004 Awesome! That sounds amazing. Good time knocking off that vertical too! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dustin_B Posted February 13, 2004 Share Posted February 13, 2004 Very sweet indeed! where you alone? what were the snow conditions like for climbing/skiing? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TeleRoss Posted February 13, 2004 Author Share Posted February 13, 2004 Yeah, I was solo, my partner bailed Monday evening due to a cold or something...??? Tuesday on my way up Van Trump Park, skinning conditions were tough because it was so warm, and the snow was pretty wet. I was getting a lot of snow build-up on my skins. Above about 8,000' that became less of a problem though. On Wednesday, the climbing conditions were excellent on the headwall. Snow was mostly frozen and firm. There were some patches of a breakable crust with loose snow underneath that resulted in some knee deep postholing, but those sections were mostly lower down on the face and were pretty short lived. Skiing conditions were less than spectacular. Hard frozen stuff up high, pretty much all the way back to camp. Then below camp there were some good turns, and then areas of breakable crust, and then down below about 7,000' it was crusty, or completely mushy depending on the aspect....pick your poison....then once below tree line the snow was very wet and heavy and made for some interesting maneuvering in the trees..... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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