Mt. Adams is about my favorite annual event. We usually hit it in July, so this year was a bit different to go in early June. The road to Cold Springs is open if a bit rutted at the top. Kerwin, Aaron and I rallied down on Saturday and showed up about 10pm. After a typical brief night's sleep, we got up at 5:30 and were hiking by 7. We hit snow and started skinning by 8 under clear skies and consistent wind. We trended left at the start to avoid the crowds and extra distance on the summer trail, and only had to use boot crampons once to get up a steep bowl.
We were a bit worried that things would not soften up given the wind and icy conditions we found on the way up, so we timed our descent for 3:30. We felt pretty good, took it slow and made the false summit at 2. Then on to the true summit over nasty ice (not surprising though, that section of the climb is always firm, even in July). We started down the Avalanche Glacier right away - very windy on top (est. sustained 30mph and cool). The top of the run, in the gap between the true summit and the northern peak, was firm ice. It quickly turned to nice corn though just before we skirted over two cracks. These, interestingly, have only been visible in the last two years - we skied this run in 2010 and there were no visible cracks.
Here's Aaron shredding the glacier. It was great all the way down when usually it gets sloppy at about 9000. We whooped and hollered all the way down the glacier and to the end of the line where we went down to the round-the-mountain trail and picked our way out. We were able to skin all the way back to the main trail, with only 1 or 2 "skis off" situations. Car by 7pm and back in Seattle at 1! Moving a bit slow on Monday but a fabulous trip.
Me taking a break.
Route details
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