iain Posted June 17, 2004 Share Posted June 17, 2004 Climb: Mt. Jefferson-West Rib Date of Climb: 6/15/2004 Trip Report: Hoping to ski the West Rib of Mount Jefferson, Mr. Hal Burton set aside his oil war obligations and we headed to Pamelia Lake. We left the trailhead around 1:30am. After a short run through the woods, we found ourselves at the toe of the avy debris of Milk Creek Gully. The enormous debris had melted out to some extent, but there were some huge scouring marks along the canyon walls with splintered trees way up there. We followed this snow up the southern gully to the shoulder of the West Rib, and gained the ridgeline there. Right away it was clear we were in for a slog, as we were postholing through a nauseating breakable crust at 2:00am. The ridge itself was a combination of loose scree, stacked talus, and postholing. It's bad news when you seek out scree as the best climbing option. The snowpack was totally trashed. A crust sat on top of about 0.5m of slushy rounds. It seems there had been no refreeze here in awhile, and it continued up the ridge with no letup in sight. Disgusted with the conditions, we decided to bail around 7500', aware of the brutal ski descent awaiting us below. We were also concerned that it would not take long at all for all this slush to activate once the sun came around the SW ridge. The skiing was challenging, involving jump turn after jump turn to get out of the snow, tedious kick turns, and combat skiing through huge avalanche debris. This is the stuff nightmares are made of: Looking up: The avalanches that come down Milk Creek must be truly enormous. Here is some of the destruction: The so-called "knife-edge" ridge on the JPG route looked quite rimed-up. It might be challenging for a few days, but the sun is surely cooking away any rime left from the storms. The SW ridge route still has a healthy amount of snow on it. The PCT is snow-free in this area. Perhaps this weekend will provide good skiing after the sun cooks that crust into submission. Right now it is combat skiing. A group turned around on JPG due to high winds and poor visibility at the saddle by Mohler Tooth the same day. Oh, and we skied right by the tent of the infamous Richard Pumpington, a true cc.com legend from back in the day. Hope we didn't ruin your beauty sleep with our sideslipping and cussing. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
gapertimmy Posted June 17, 2004 Share Posted June 17, 2004 sweet! from what i've seen so far, north/east facing aspects are a bit more setup... but nonetheless, this current weather will buff things up pretty nice. thanks for the pics iain! that avvy debri is just insane huh Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
iain Posted June 17, 2004 Author Share Posted June 17, 2004 Yeah it looks like Jefferson always has a huge avy event in the spring like that. The full avalanche track goes way down below the PCT. We were thinking it might date back to when the Milk Creek Glacier collapsed back in the 70's. Yeah based on your TR it looks like the good stuff is on the north/east aspects. The guys on JPG were saying they were not hitting that crust at all. This weekend should be good to go for skiing on all aspects again, I would guess. Still plenty of snow out there. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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