[TR] Mt. Adams - South Spur- the really really long way 5/8/2009

[ropegoat]

Trip: Mt. Adams - South Spur- the really really long way

 

Date: 5/8/2009

 

Trip Report:

So I wanted to ski this weekend, really really bad, but avy conditions friday/saturday were not promising. Dinomyte (Jon) and Whiski (Chris) were of similar inclinations, phone calls were made, and Adams provided good low danger terrain with the possibility of nice turns. I packed the tele gear, met whiski (with AT gear), and we met Dinomyte (Jon, hoofing it with a snowboard) at the "trailhead", about 6 miles down the road from the actual trailhead. (Dinomyte posted some detailed conditions under the thread on this forum).

 

We started walking up the road at 145, put the skins after 30 minutes of walking, and they stayed on until 11,200ft. Jon got shut down by the thin crust over light powder once we left the road (430am). He encouraged us to head on up, and we took a variation east of the regular route to avoid some obvious avy terrain- we saw debris from a size ~2ish avy likely released on Friday. Took a food break around 7 (~8600'), but kept moving, the length of the day was just sinking in with another 3800' to climb.

 

The snow really shaped up nicely above the lunch counter. We took off the skins for the steeper section under pikers, but the snow was still good for kicking steps. The top of Pikers was a total mess- ice chunk crap everywhere, and the ice chunk crap continued to the true summit. We summitted around 1245 in beautiful blue skies with big puffy clouds. We hung out for about 20 minutes, and just as we were packing up, whiteout conditions rolled in. We couldn't make out the ground from the sky, we couldn't see if the ground was angled or where we might ski. I got one quick window to shoot a bearing to pikers before it really cemented in. Ultimate, we took the skis off and followed our boot track all the way to the snowfield below pikers.

 

Dropping off pikers we dropped below the whiteout, found great snow, and had a blast descending to lunch counter- got there around 300pm and had super beautiful views of St. Helens. Neither of us were familiar with the route and we ended up skiing the wrong snow lead out, but realized our error and hiked west over a bunch of rock bands. The snow below lunch counter was surprisingly hard and windshaped, not much fun to ski. Lower, it turned to complete slush, just glop impossible to turn in. Chris and I briefly lost each other in the snowmobile tracks leading down to the road. We eventually found one another and boogied towards the car. We found a few snow leads we missed in the morning and with just a little walking, ended up skiing to within sight of my van. The packs and boots came off at 645pm.

 

Thanks for a great trip Chris. Jon, props for the help and checking in.

 

All: my camera is still buried somewhere in my smelly gear, I will add photos as soon as I find it- but I wanted to get the info on conditions up.

 

Gear Notes:

skins required,

 

Approach Notes:

pop tarts for breakfast

[LostCamKenny]

You guys were lucky the whiteout gave you a window... Nice work!

 

How did the Mazama Glacier route look - just east of the south spur?

[dinomyte]

I saw you guys heading up that east route. After a lot of breaks I went the normal route - up into the bowl below Crescent Glacier. I saw some stuff starting to crack up on that ridge, but decided to go up that face anyway. I followed a boot track up through a gap south of where i saw any cracking. Probably stupid, but....

 

From there, I followed the tracks till they ran out, which was at about 8500 feet.

 

I looked up and saw you guys nearing Pikers and that point. I figured on you summitting about noon or so.

 

I called to tell you to look for me on the way down. THen I made my way on up to lunch counter.

 

I hung out till 12:45 or so, thinking I'd see you start down, but I thought I probably missed you. So, I headed down.

 

Conditions were shit! I spent most of my time trying to stay in the sled tracks, which is actually pretty tough, but it was just compacted enough to make it work!

 

I was back at the car at 3:30.

 

By the way, I've done that "hikinbg west over several rock bands" quite a bit! This time, I knew exactly where to head!

 

Nice job guys.

[dinomyte]

Here are a few of my shots guys. You're actually in 2 of them. See if you can spot yourselves.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Sanchez]

Holy crap, that is a long day. I've done that route a couple times with the road open and thought it was a mother f'in biatch. Nice work.