firebeard Posted January 28, 2015 Posted January 28, 2015 Trip: Mt Rainier - Gibraltar Ledge/Ingraham Direct Date: 1/25/2015 Trip Report: My climbing partners and I reached camp muir Saturday evening about 4:00 to find the place deserted. We had the hut all to ourselves until a group of four came in about 9:30 that night. Wind was howling. Next day we went up Gib Ledge and down the ingraham direct through cadaver gap and back to muir. -Left Camp Muir at 4:30 up to the ledge and reached it by 7:00. -Made to through the ledge and to the top of Gib Rock by about 8:30. -Winds where awful we decided to skip the summit trip and head directly down the ingraham to cadaver gap. -Ingraham was not a problem to navigate through. -The Gib ledge was in fine shape and it was easy to make good footing all the way through. There was no ice on the route and the snow firm but easy to kick steps in on the way up and quite soft by the time we descended. Gear Notes: Standard glacier travel equipment. Forcast was for 19F with 60mph winds on summit I ended up to warm with multiple layers and down jacket under shell. Quote
stamati Posted January 28, 2015 Posted January 28, 2015 We talked to that group of 4 from Spokane about y'all. None of us got very far- my buddy and I got to 13400 and they got a bit higher. The winds just kept picking up over the course of the weekend! Quote
lukeh Posted January 29, 2015 Posted January 29, 2015 Nice effort guys - thanks for the TR/pics. Headed up there tomorrow night. Quote
firebeard Posted January 30, 2015 Author Posted January 30, 2015 Stamati, Yes winds were crappy. Beautiful day otherwise. Have fun Lukeh the winds and weather looks quite favorable for you Quote
lukeh Posted February 1, 2015 Posted February 1, 2015 Posted a new TR. The Ingraham looked super broken up - not sure what line you guys followed. I ended up punching through and bailed on the ID descent. Too many crevasses and sketchy bridges. We got on it later in the day with the sun out so that surely contributed to the precariousness of it all, but it still looked like a maze of crevasses w/o a clear line of descent. I wonder if it had broken up more over the past week as the terrain up to Muir certainly showed more exposed rock vs. 2 weeks ago, or maybe we just couldn't spot a good line (oversight). Your tracks down from Cadaver Gap were still obvious - nice work coming down through there, definitely looks steeper and more broken up than the standard Cathedral Rocks descent. Quote
christensent Posted February 1, 2015 Posted February 1, 2015 From what I heard up at Muir, the huge avalanche on the Ingraham occurred mid-week. This is probably why it was easy last weekend and pretty much out this weekend. Quote
firebeard Posted February 3, 2015 Author Posted February 3, 2015 Interesting trip report Lukeh glad that fall was not bad. From the look of your GPS tracks we took a pretty similar descent line at the start of the ingraham. Maybe the avalanche did take some snow off the route that made things a bit more passable. On the way down it definitely was broken up in a lot of places but the line we went with got us all the way to cadaver without much of an issue. Lucky line? Quote
lukeh Posted February 3, 2015 Posted February 3, 2015 Firebeard that first left your tracks show after heading down the Ingraham looked to me to be a sagging bridge between two massive gapers from my vantage point (if I'm correlating that spot correctly), otherwise that was going to be our line as well. If I wouldn't have fallen it's possible we still would of went for it, but after falling I wasn't feeling up to testing more bridges. But then your tracks go right back towards gib rock which to me looked like a maze of impassable crevasses. You sometimes don't know thought until you get closer what'll go. The large avy seemed to start lower in the Ingraham (maybe halfway down gib rock?) and spill out onto the flats. Quote
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