[TR] Mt. Shuksan - Sulphide Glacier 5/19/2008

[fenderfour]

Trip: Mt. Shuksan - Sulphide Glacier

 

Date: 5/19/2008

 

Trip Report:

This is the non trip report trip report. I'm just here to tell you that the route is climbable. You can drive about 2 miles from the Shannon Creek trail head.

 

The trail is under snow, take the ridge up or straight line up the hill.

 

The glacier is what you would expect this time of year. The gulley on the summit is a bit icy.

 

AAI had a crew up there for a 5 day seminar

 

Oh, and somebody left a gigantic pile of shit at the notch. Thanks!

 

Approach Notes:

Park ~2 miles from TH

[Chriznitch]

sorry about that, they didn't teach us pooping until day 4

[dannycoolski]

I'm new to the NW, what would you expect of the glacier this time of year? And is the summit gulley skiable right now?

[counterfeitfake]

The glacier is in pretty good shape. Few open crevasses, but there was evidence of some barely-covered ones.

 

HELL NO the summit gulley is not skiable right now. Not even close.

[Bosse]

Has anybody else been up there after the 19th? I'd like recent beta on the Shuksan Sulphide Glacier Route, including road conditions to the trailhead and snow conditions on the summit pyramid. Do you still have to hike in two miles to the trailhead?

 

Suzanne

[fenderfour]

suck it up and hike in.

[KaskadskyjKozak]

suck it up and hike in.

 

I'll be nicer about it. 2 miles of road is not a big deal... probably 45 min more to the approach.

 

[Waydough]

I was there Friday, May 31 with a couple of friends. The summit pyramid gully still has snow but it was rather rotten and thin in a few places. Expect to be grabbing rock or drytooling in a couple of places. We wer able to sink a couple of pickets. I'm not very experiences at steep rotten alpine snow and ice climbing, and my two friends were fine with soloing in the conditions we had.

 

I don't know about the Sulphide approach trailhead and trail conditions. There was a party of two coming up the Sulphine and got on the east ridge of the summit pyrmid about an hour behind our ascent. We climbed and descended via different routes (north face up and White Salmon ski down). The NF is in great conditions for the ascent and the White Salmon was corn the whole way down for 5000 feet with very few crevasse issues to deal with.

[KaskadskyjKozak]

 

How was the approach for the NF?

[Waydough]

The north face approach is in perfect condition. We parked at the lower/White Salmon lodge road entrance where the lock the gate in the summer. We skied from the lodge to Chair 8 and did the traverse from 3600-3800' in the dark without any problems. The gullies were all easily crossable without much looking around and once we broke out of the gullies it was easy and safe to ski all the way to the col at the base of the north face (3 hours from the car all in the dark).

 

I'll try to write up the trip report with photos and post tonight.

[KaskadskyjKozak]

 

sweet!