[TR] Mt Adams - South Side 7/24/2012

[yellowlab03]

Trip: Mt Adams - South Side

 

Date: 7/24/2012

 

Trip Report:

First time with this so bear with me here. The wife and I wanted to cut our teeth on something relatively easy and non-technical, so after reading up on Adams we decided it was the best option. We did the standard South Side route, which we had tried last year. The problem we had was that we tried the winter route like last year when we should have done the summer route. The summer route is 98% snow and is a very direct route, the winter route was mostly talus fields and follows Suksdorf ridge. We could have reached Lunch Counter twice as fast had we followed the summer route and probably not rolled our ankles umpteen million times! Pics:

 

Trail from Cold Springs just before the winter/summer route split.

This is coming from the winter route = No fun.

The snow to the right is the summer route = easy and direct

Hood and Jefferson

St. Helens

 

 

 

Piker's peak from Lunch Counter.

Lunch Counter from Piker's Peak.

True summit from Piker's peak.

 

 

 

Mt. Rainier from the summit.

The glisade from Piker's peak down to lunch counter was pretty wild, the tunnel had to be 4 feet deep in some spots. It took us less than 45 minutes to get from the summit back to our camp at Lunch Counter.

 

This dude was cruising around our camp for an hour or so.

Snowfield at the bottom of Lunch Counter heading back to Cold Springs.

Cool pic of St. Helens.

 

Cornice on the summer route.

Last shot before heading back to the car.

 

Awesome trip for us! Glad we did it during the week, because the Ranger at Trout Lake told us they had 430 something people on the mountain over the weekend. Looking forward to Rainier in two weeks!

 

Gear Notes:

Boots, crampons and axe if you start early otherwise stay on the rock band and you almost won't even touch snow the whole way up from Lunch Counter.

 

Approach Notes:

Take the 183 trail and follow the boot pack to Lunch Counter, follow boot pack from lunch counter to summit

[Sanchez]

Nice! See any recent ski tracks on the way down or is it too far gone and sun-cupped for such activities?

[yellowlab03]

The snow on the summit was rotten, and about 12 inches deep maybe. There were a few guys snowboarding down off of the false summit around 5:30pm the day before, other than that I didn't see any ski tracks at all.

[counterfeitfake]

Good report, nice pics!

 

I skied the SW chutes last Saturday, it was in great shape, no sun-cups. The south spur would ski well too, if that's your bag. We skied down right about noon which was good corn timing, the south spur would warm up faster. Approach on snow was super easy, good boot pack, I did it all in approach shoes with ski poles, no crampons, ymmv.

[medicsandy]

thanks for the report. will be out there in a week. question....is there any kind of marking where the summer/winter trails split?

[yellowlab03]

Ya, there is a huge boot track going to the left, and also trail markers made of stones and a fence post every so often.