Up the Sahale Glacier

Looking down the Sahale Glacier

Some sort of furry-footed snow bird

All photos here

We attempted to summit Mount Rainier via the Emmons/Winthrop glacer route. Unfortunately, I was hit with AMS at just under 12,000 feet, forcing us to descend. This was a major blow, but I felt better after getting back to camp.

Aside from not summiting, the trip up to Camp Schurman via the Inter glacier was fantastic. The climb is almost exactly 5000 feet from the White River campground, over the course of about 6 miles.

I think the yeti talk might have started while doing rope/crevasse rescue work at Volunteer Park the previous Sunday. The theory—this is unproven, mind you—goes something like this: modern glacial geologic theory is completely wrong. Instead, glacier movement is dictated by large groups of highly organized yetis. The apparent sound of crevasses is really nothing more than the incredibly irregular and un-rythmic sound of the yetis' drums. These drums are to keep the yetis moving the glaciers down the mountain. If they can move a glacier faster than it can rebuild itself, the glacier recedes. Otherwise it grows in mass, and their work becomes more difficult. Keep in mind that this theory had nothing to do with altitude.

Arriving at Camp Schurman

Once at Camp Schurman we melted snow and went to bed around 6:30. We set Run for the Hills to wake us at 11:45 that same night.

We started hiking around 1:00 am, and made remarkable time. The crevasses and unstable snowbridges were navigatable in the dark, but on the return trip, many of the snowbridges looked much more dicey in the daylight. We managed to get to 11,700 feet by about 4 in the morning, and this is when the altitude sickness hit. We sat around freezing for about 45 minutes, but my condition didn't improve, so we started the long cold walk down to camp.

Crevasse and Curtis Headwall

1. Go to Google News and scroll to the bottom of the page, where a series of links to news for other countries is available. For example:
   • Cuba
   • Deutschland
   • Venezuela
2. Once you have the link, use Google's language tools to translate the url from step 1.

That's it. Links clicked from within the translated page will automatically be translated...

All photos for this trip can be found here.

The trip started with a quick tour of Seattle to round up the various participants in Bettsy the Trooper. After caffiene and greasy goodness from Don's Restaurant in Marysville, we hit the 21 mile FS16 road, or Illabot Creek road, for those desiring a less beauracratic naming convention. Midway up the road we managed to break Bettsy's door so that it took 3 people pushing, and one person pulling to bend the metal back just enought for the door to shut. Then we were back on our way to the trailhead.

The hike to Slide Lake went about as quick as could be expected. That was the end of the easy going. About mid-way through the length of Slide Lake, the trail becomes a track, marred into oblivion by downed trees and brush. This quasi-trail ends with the lake.

We managed to find the "fisherman's trail" paralleling Otter creek, but quickly lost it. This wasn't so bad, until we made the horrible mistake of crossing the creek, and headed up the wrong creek valley. Once we realized our mistake, we had gained enough elevation that turning back seemed like more effort than making do with our current course.

At one point we were climbing 50 degree vegetation high above a waterfall. Once we found a place to re-cross the creek that should have never been crossed in the first place, we were well off course, and had to contour back north to regain the proper drainage.

All in all, this detour probably added 2 hours to our approach time for Enjar lake, thus making the total time to base-camp roughly 6 hours.

We still had enough time to relax with some blueberry cheesecake (but we forgot the scotch).

With the alarms set for 3:30 am, we crawled into our tents and bivies, only barely surviving an encounter with Mr. Bivy.Mr. Bivy Attacks!

 
Iron Maiden's Run for the Hills woke us at 3:30, and we were hiking by 4:30. We quickly repeated the mistakes of the day before by trying to cut through brush on the north side of Hamar lake. This sapped much of our energy, and probably added about half an hour to an hour of time to our trip.

After stumbling out of the aforementioned brush into a gulley, we ascended to the left of the cliff bands on our way up to the saddle. Remarkably, we found a semblence of a trail winding up through the cliffs.

Skirting Snowking glacier: That's Mt Baker in the distance.

From just below the saddle, the route gets really good, and we were almost able to forget the hellish approach to Enjar (although we knew it would be reversed after the summit). We bi-passed the lower saddle, and instead aimed directly at the upper saddle. Once this saddle was gained, we "cramponed up", and began the long arcing traverse towards first the saddle directly north of west peak, and then continuing below the west and middle peaks. Conditions were such that we were able to stay high enough to avoid the scramble down to the base of the snow ramp, and also avoid the glacier by passing above and around.

Karl on summit ridge

The final 500 feet of the climb are on a 3rd class ridge, and a talus slope. We reached the summit around 11:00 am.

How I would do it if I had to do it again

The hardest part, as might be obvious from the above dialogue, was getting to and from Enjar lake. That being said, here is my revised and in retrospect route description.

At the end of the Slide Lake trail, locate a campsite overlooking the Otter Creek inlet. From this campsite, follow a faint trail up (bearing east-northeast) and away from the creek, into the woods. Do not follow the track immediately paralleling the river.

This trail, as un-maintained as it is, will still lead all the way to Enjar lake if you manage to follow it for it's entire length. If you lose the trail, back-track to the last known location of the trail and try again. Any time wasted in this effort will be made up for by the much worse prospect of going on without a trail.

Pass Enjar Lake on the north (or on the south, if you prefer talus to trail-less forest), but then pass Hamar lake on the south, to avoid horrid bushwacking.

Once you pass Hamar lake, the Beckey description is spot-on.

Map Northwest Route: The dashed line is the route we took. The solid line represents a better route around Hamar lake.

The northwest route from upper saddle

We (that would be Jake, Kyrin and myself) left Seattle after work on a Friday, ate some fast food and then rocketed up the Baker highway and finally the dirt road towards the base of the Coleman-Deming route. The road was closed about a mile and a half from the trail head, so we parked and went to bed after swapping stories with various Canadian ski mountaineers.

We woke at 5:30 and hiked to base camp above the Hog's Back, arriving around 11:30 am. This left us the remainder of the day to sit in the radiation bowl formed by Mt. Baker, and Lincoln and Colfax peaks. This resulted in a) boredom and b) severe sun burns for all. When the boredom got the best of us, we went to bed at 5:00 in the afternoon.

Wind and loud people kept us awake until 8 or 9.

2:00 am came mighty quick, and we roped up (as this was the prudent thing to do) and started climbing up the Coleman glacier. After we'd ascended 1500 feet, we discovered that a pair of glacier glasses was still sitting back at camp. We pushed onward and upward, after deciding that a descent back to camp would kill the entire day. We had a truly half-assed plan of using prescription glasses and climbing tape to fashion glacier-worthy sun protection. This proved unnecessary as we were able to borrow ski goggles from one of the prudent mountaineers.

After getting stuck behind said mountaineers for the climb up to the Coleman/Deming divide, we were able to get around them and continue the push for the summit. We attained the summit at about 9:30, ate a quick bite, and then bombed back down to base camp, and then, eventually, the car.

To demonstrate the powa of the Pringles Can System, first, we look at the ® symbol on some crap-ass light from Ikea in figures one and two.
figure one
figure two

This was taken at a minumum setting, meaning a 70mm lense flipped backwards at infinite focus...

Next we play with a quarter, shown above, and just for scale, figure three is presented.
figure three

The robot in figure three's face was the next experiment, shown here:

(Stay tuned here for future macro photos.)