Thursday, June 11, 2009

Volcano #3 (Mt. Adams)

I've made it to the top of three volcanoes around here now. First Hood, then Rainier (twice), then Adams last weekend. Did this trip with Reid, Veronika (a friend from the UW climbing club) and several of Reids buddies (one of whom [Bill] toughed it out to the top with us).

This was a spectacular trip. Gorgeous weather, good friends, and to use a UW climbing club phrase, good times. We climbed the South Spur. I had to tow a tree out of the way as we drove to the TH at gray daylight. We got on the trail at 7 am, and hit the summit just before 4 pm. TH is at 4500 ft. Summit is at 12300. Nearly 8000 vertical. The most vertical footage I've ever done in a day. But we did get to cheat and ski down. Took about 3 hrs down.

Here's a google earth image of the route we did (GPS trace from Veronika's GPS).


See all pictures at http://picasaweb.google.com/remierice/20090606MtAdams#

Saw some of Veronika's fellow Russians near the summit and they posed with their flag. The dudes joked with me that they were meeting there for a secret KGB meeting. I joked back asking where their Kalashnikovs were. They responded quite seriously, "Kalashnikovs are quite heavy. Nearly 10 kilos. We would never carry those up here."


Here's our summit shot.


and a picture of my skis on top :)


Veronica took some nice pics of me on the way down the SW chute. The route was spectacular. At the top, it was a bit icy, but below about 11,000 ft, the snow was softened by the sun. The best part of the chute had snow of very uniform consistency that let you sink in about a foot with each jump turn. See the video too in the pictures on Picasa.