Eric Anderson Posted June 4, 2013 Posted June 4, 2013 On Friday 5 of us headed up to the Easton Glacier after news of the washed out road on the North side altered our plans. We hit the trail around 3, a bit later than we’d like but the sun was out and it was quiet. The road is closed about 2/3 of a mile from the TH and it looks like it will be several weeks until it melts out. We setup camp at about 6000’ and the clouds lifted to 15k or so giving us great views of Whitehorse, Glacier Peak and the many less prominent peaks in the Central Cascades. We made the poor decision of starting at 5am for the summit and the lack of a bootpath to follow or an overnight freeze left us initially sinking to about ankles. Above 8k we started periodically postholing to our thighs. The clouds came in and brought periodic snow showers, other than a brief moment at 9500’ we had only a few hundred feet of visibility. We were a little tired when we hit the saddle between Sherman Peak and the Roman Wall and we could no longer see the route as the skin tracks we were following disappeared so we turned around. The way down we had very soft snow and often sunk up to our waist. Three of us punched through snow bridges, I fell in the deepest, about up to my waist. We saw about 4 more crevasses that had opened up along the route during the day. On the way down we saw at least 60 people heading up for summit attempts on Sunday. I’m sure quite a few of them had better luck than we did. Beautiful mountain, I wish I had skis. Quote
genepires Posted June 5, 2013 Posted June 5, 2013 great photos! the easton is pretty damn nice when the parking lot is snowed in. where the snowmobiles still running around? hopefully you went past their allowed time frame. Quote
Eric Anderson Posted June 5, 2013 Author Posted June 5, 2013 great photos! the easton is pretty damn nice when the parking lot is snowed in. where the snowmobiles still running around? hopefully you went past their allowed time frame. There were a few sleds around, they don't bother me much but I can see how the route would be annoying if they did. The road was packed with cars on our way out, probably about 30-40 that showed up on Saturday, a few that parked like dicks. We were hoping to go give the route another shot but I think we'll have to make it midweek so the crowds aren't too bad since the CD route is closed. Quote
Wesley Witt Posted June 5, 2013 Posted June 5, 2013 Me and some friends climbed via the Boulder Glacier route this weekend as well. We also turned around at about 9300ft due to bad weather conditions. Quote
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