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[TR] Mt Rainier - Liberty Ridge 7/4/2012


mattschweiker

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Trip: Mt Rainier - Liberty Ridge

 

Date: 7/4/2012

 

Trip Report:

Josh, Gerry, Matt and I climbed Liberty Ridge in perfect conditions over the 4th of July. We left early from Seattle on July 4th to arrive at the Ranger station to get a permit as soon as they opened. Considering the weather had been pretty miserable in June, we figured we wouldn't be the only ones with the idea to jump on this route with the excellent forecast predicted through the weekend. Our hike into Curtis Ridge was uneventful. We did meet Tom, Franklin and Don who were attempting Curtis Ridge. We spotted them once from Thumb Rock but don't know how their trip ended. Hopefully successful!

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Getting onto the Carbon Glacier wasn't as straight forward as we expected. We spotted a boulder with a few slings but .decided it looked too unstable and found a right traversing chossy scramble that landed us in a small moat. A few easy moves climbing out landed us on the very broken up Carbon glacier. We picked our way through the glacier and moved as quickly as possible up the slopes below Thumb Rock. Even early in the morning there was enough rock fall to make us move as fast as possible.

 

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We started early and had perfect snow conditions which allowed us to move quickly. Route finding on the ridge was very straight-forward. By sunrise we encountered our first easy section of ice. This could have been bypassed by staying right but it looked fun and was very low angle and wouldn't really slow us down.

 

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We expected the schrund to be the crux of the route but as we got closer we saw there was an easy snow bridge to cross.

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From this point on the wind picked up considerably. We took a brief break below Liberty Cap and Matt busted out a firework that he had lugged all the way up to this point. After laughing pretty hard at the unexpected fireworks display we continued on to the summit. Gerry headed towards one more steep section to make things interesting.

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We got the summit but didn't stay long because of very high winds.

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Summit photo minus Josh.

The descent down the Emmons was easy enough and we were back to the car by 3pm. Great route with a great group.

 

Gear Notes:

2 pickets and 4 screws

Edited by mattschweiker
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Nice work you guys, great pics. Perfect weather window!

 

That was dumb letting off a firework like that, aren't you concerned about fire danger at all? For your two seconds of fun, the whole mountain could burn. Real cool. /quote]

 

Yea wow - they could have set the whole ice cap on fire, that would be a neat trick!

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