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[TR] MT. RAINIER - FUHERE FINGER 6/29/2014


JTrevino

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Trip: MT. RAINIER - FUHERE FINGER

 

Date: 6/29/2014

 

Trip Report:

Thursday: hiked to base camp at the Turtle. dropped into the lower Nisqually at 6333ft and hugged right to avoid majority of lower crevasse hazard. The Fan sucked (still do-able, but much safer accessing lower Wilson from gully up and left of Nisqually. 7.5hrs to base camp (camped at the main camp-the one that like 200ft above Wilson glacier access point). storm began late afternoon.

 

Friday: weathering wind and snow.

 

Saturday: weathering the worst part of the storm. got stir crazy and went out to wand the Wilson glacier up to the mouth of the Finger in 50ft visibility. got drenched.

 

Sunday: start time 12:15. FF hour glass took all of 3 hour with 40-50mph gusts and spin-drift, plus hauling two first-timer on the mountain (side note: these two will make great mountaineers considering their introduction to climbing was this assent. I'm proud of you guys. great job). descended the Kautz. there were plenty of ice columns to rap off of on both ice pitches. ranger at paradise warned us of bullet ice with 1" of snow cover on these pitches, but Sunday it was more like 6-8" of stable. we used a few screws on a running belay for added protection while trying to reach optimal ice columns.

 

we spent an extra hour in the pea-soup fog on our way out down in the lower Nisqually. we wanded our entire way to base camp, but apparently AAI pull every last wand that wasn't within 5" of their wands. why? I don't know. maybe they were worried their clients would confuse ours for theirs (should have been fairly obvious as our wands were completely different plus the fact that our flags had dicks drawn on them, thanks Jowed. I need to make another Eclectic Approach show soon.) interesting because the only place our route varied from theirs was navigating the lower Nisqually. I think they prefer going up the guts of the lower Nisqually to impress clientele. anyways we wondered for an extra hour attempting to find our crevasse-field bypass with a soaked map and GPS going haywire.

 

fun trip! great conditions-should be great for a while.

 

thanks and great job Mike, Scott, Grant, Duarte, and Steve!

 

I obviously know nothing about uploading photos-sorry

 

[img:left]http://cascadeclimbers.com/plab/showphoto.php?photo=97794&title=fuhere-finger-2c-rainier&cat=504[/img]

 

[img:left]http://cascadeclimbers.com/plab/data/504/photo_237.JPG[/img]

 

[img:left]http://cascadeclimbers.com/plab/data/504/photo_133.JPG[/img]

 

[img:left]http://cascadeclimbers.com/plab/data/504/medium/photo_72.JPG[/img]

 

[img:left]http://cascadeclimbers.com/plab/data/504/photo_419.JPG[/img]

 

 

[img:left]http://cascadeclimbers.com/plab/data/504/medium/photo_510.JPG[/img]

 

[img:left]http://cascadeclimbers.com/plab/data/504/photo_323.JPG[/img]

 

[img:left]http://cascadeclimbers.com/plab/data/504/medium/photo_82.JPG[/img]

 

 

Gear Notes:

two 30M ropes (to rap ice pitches on Kautz-decent), used 3-4 screws, pickets (used 1), blue bags (plural)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Approach Notes:

Paradise, Nisqually Glacier, the Fan was crap-access lower Wilson from gully nw of Fan, base camp at Turtle. We left our wands from Turtle across the Wilson for two other parties that showed up the day we left. Wilson Glacier is in great shape-direct line to access finger/thumb with relatively small crevasse hazard.

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