[TR] Rainier- Kautz 8/7/2005

[BigLegs]

Climb: Rainier-Kautz

 

Date of Climb: 8/7/2005

 

Trip Report:

Sir_Vent and I climbed the Kautz glacier on rainier this weekend, starting from paradise, carrying over and descending the DC. This was a great trip; our paces matched well, our packs were not too heavy, our bivy was sunny and warm, there were only two other parties on the route (neither of which we ever saw during the day) and the route was challenging enough to be fun but not scary.

 

Day 1:

We left Seattle around 6AM, registered at paradise and by 9:30 were hiking towards the nisqually. The nisqually crossing is mostly dirt with small ice patches except in the middle which is ice with small dirt patches. We were a little apprehensive about "the fan" because of reports of loose rock. However, we found it to be generally solid relatively low angle small talus/streambed all the way to the edge of the wilson glacier. Climbing the edge of the wilson included two short sections of ice. A few hours of mostly snow climbing led to scenic bivys with flowing water above 10,500 feet. We arrived around 3:30, rested, had dinner, enjoyed the views, sunbathed, and sir_vent told bad jokes. We slept out in sleeping bags on top of our packs, I had a bivy sack but didn't use it.

 

Day 2:

Around 3AM a party that had camped 1000 feet down the ridge walked past our camp with headlamps. We had decided we wanted to be able to see in the ice chutes so we got up at 3:45, packed up, had breakfast and were hiking towards the ice cliff by 4:30. Staying on the left branch of the climber's path took us to a short drop onto the kautz that we rappelled, bypassing the debris gulley at camp hazard. We simulclimbed the lower (?30 degree) section of the ice chute and ben led the upper section as one pitch, protecting it with ice screws (pickets were useless here). We took a route off to the left side of the chute that was slightly steeper but more featured than the center of the chute. Once past the chute we ascended easy slopes to the summit saddle and then up to columbia crest, arriving at 10:15. Routefinding on the upper kautz was pretty straightforward but we crossed about a dozen crevasses that were just starting to open up; in a week or two this upper section will take a lot longer. We had lunch at the summit register, then descended the DC route. This was definitely the way to go; we left the summit at 10:50 and were back to the car by 3:00. Neither of us had been on rainier before and we enjoyed the contrast of descending a different route; the DC route currently has much more interesting crevasse/serac fields than the kautz.

 

Booty:

a blue sit-pad, a pack of banana gu, an advil

 

 

Gear Notes:

Sleeping bags, crampons, two ice tools each (I had two short mountaineering style axes which worked ok for following in the upper chute but would have been scary for leading), 4 ice screws, bean and cheese burritos

 

Approach Notes:

Approach from paradise was fine. The fan is not loose, the turtle has plenty of snow, and it much more interesting to carry over and descend the DC than to descend the route. This also forces you to only bring what you might need; my pack was lighter than it is on some one-day climbs.

[BigLegs]

The route

 

 

 

 

 

crossing the nisqually

 

 

A large group (mounties?) practicing ice climbing on the nisqually

 

 

The turtle, ice cliff

 

 

 

 

 

Our bivy and views

 

 

 

 

Morning views from the ice chute

 

 

Climbing the ice chute

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Upper slopes

 

 

On Top

 

DC route descent

 

Edited August 8, 2005 by BigLegs

[thelawgoddess]

sweet. always nice to see pics. especially love the first montage of the route. glad you had a fun safe climb. good thing you weren't sharing a tent with that menu ...

[knotzen]

Cool pix!

[cluck]

Very cool. Strong work and thanks for the pics!

 

[Kraken]

nice job guys. I wish we would have been able to complete this route, but bad weather wouldn't let us up.

[pup_on_the_mountain]

Awesome!

 

Thanks for the pictures and TR. I would like to give this route a go later this month (hope it'll stay in decent shape for three more weeks )

 

Clint, when are you heading back to AK?

[Kraken]

5 days. it's coming up quick.

[sir_vent]

The crevasses are opening up on the top of the route, I'd give it another week or so of hot weather then it's gonna be much more of a hassle.