Winthrop/Emmons suggestions

[knatapow]

I am looking for a itinerary for getting up the Emmons Glacier route with very little time. I am planning on breaking out of work early on Friday and would love to be home by midnight on Sunday. Any suggestions on points to reach by Friday night, Saturday and Sunday?

[vkaspar]

drive to white river, friday evening.

plan 1: real fast and light

take day packs. hike to camp shurman up the interglacier after dark, keep going. Headlamps or moonlight should make the climbers trail up the Emmons easy to follow unless there has been significant precip on the mountian in the last few days. you will summit early morning sometime, be down early afternoon, and out to the car in under 24 hours.

any other way you do it, getting there friday night will not buy you anything over getting there sat afternoon

vicky

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safe climbing! vkaspar

[mattp]

Go as far as you can on Friday. For acclimitization, spending a night at the White River campground would be better than sleeping in the lowland, and there is good camping at Glacier Basin, and even part way up the interglacier (on the ridge of Mount Ruth). Assuming you are making good time and this means you get as far as the top of the Interglacier before mid afternoon on Saturday, err toward stopping early. There are good camp spots on the ridge along side the Interglacier just before you drop down on to the Emmons, and also at Camp Schurman. There would be little advantage in pressing on to, say, the Emmons "Flats" just to make a higher camp on Saturday night -- particularly if that meant you didn't rest up and hydrate properly. Also, there is some research to suggest that spending the night at such a high elevation only causes you to be more prone to altitude illness on your climb, unless you took several nights to get there. Expect a lot of work if you are going this weekend - there is a lot of new snow and more on the way.

[Alpine_Tom]

A more reasonable alternative:

go home and get a good night's sleep Friday evening. Get up Saturday AM and drive down to White River, and do a standard 2-day ascent -- camp at Camp Shurman, get up at midnight and do the summit. With a little luck you can be back to Shurman by 2:00 or so, where you can rest for a couple of hours, then pack out.

Bring (and eat) plenty of high-carb food, and drink more water than you want.

I've done a one-day ascent of Rainier (Fuhrer Finger) and in some ways I think it's easier than a two-day. Certainly it relies on a smaller window of good weather.

But Emmonds is a looong climb, and a long hike in and back out. And, if something goes wrong, being up there with daypacks this time of year seems risky.

Maybe I'm just getting old and tired.

 

[philfort]

No one has mentioned that the White River Road is still closed. Scheduled to open only next Monday, according to http://www.nps.gov/mora/current/current.htm#roadopen

If this is true, that adds a lot of miles.