7/3/01
Met Matt at his house in Underwood, WA for the drive up to the trailhead at Cold Springs. After doing the permit and payment shuffle at the Ranger Station in Trout Lake we were on our way up the hill.
| Mt. Adams as seen just outside of Trout Lake. |
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Arrived at Cold Springs in time for a couple of beers. We were amazed at how FEW people there were up there. . . . we thought for sure that we'd be competing with the masses on this holiday stretch. Matt piled into his van and I stretched out on a flat spot open-air for some sleep.
My alarm went off at 3AM. Chowed on some Newtons and H2O and then we hit the trail - about 3:40. Followed the Southside climbers route to the intersection with the Round-the-Mountain trail without encountering any snow, save for a few patches here and there. We pushed on and pounded out a good 2000 vertical feet before break number one - we were still in our street shoes and still no real reason to change over to boots yet, as we could follow a pretty straightforward trail in the ridge.
A single climber was there with a good-looking malamute dog in tow. "Is this your dog?" . . . She said it had been following her since her departure from the trailhead. That dog - a malamute mix or something - would wind up staying near us all the way to the false summit . . . fully qualifying Suksdorf ridge as the "dog route."
Shortly thereafter we left the rocks and scree for the snow - it was super firm which quelled our fears of skiing in the mush. It was supposed to be over 90 today in Portland and over 100 in The Dalles. After another couple of hours of straight ahead climbing we reached the false summit at 11,600 feet. It was about 10:30 . . . a pretty leisurely 6+ hours and over 6000 vertical feet above our starting elevation.
| Matt preps his gear at the top of the Southwest Chutes . The true summit is directly behind him. |
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The surface looked outstanding . . . a stark contrast to our previous visit up here in late July, 1999 that featured man-eating suncups and shark fins that made the descent more survival than skiing. A storm 5 days before had apparently put down a bunch of new snow above 9K and had filled everthing in nicely. No suncups, no runnels, no sharkfins, just smooth hard snow that was turning over into corn before our eyes. The timing couldn't have been better.
We watched as others continued their climb to the summit. I made a short traverse westward to the top of the Chutes just to see how the snow was coming together not really expecting to start our descent for at least another 30 minutes.
| Fellow enthusiasts standing at the false summit at 11,600 feet. |
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About half-way across I turned to Matt and told him I thought the timer on this corn had already gone off! He put on his skis and traversed over to my location. We were glad we hadn't waited too much longer - there was about 1/4 to 1/2 inch of fully skiable corn on top of a hard base - just waiting for us to dig in.
| Matt gets into the descent queue . . . angling to the second chute to skiers right. |
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Matt did the honors and quickly descended on this pitch. The Chutes have two skiable lines that parallel each other at a sustained pitch of 30+ degrees for about 3000 feet then mellows toward the bottom. Permits fall-line skiing from over 11,600 feet down to about 8000 feet.
| One of many hundreds of choice turns in the Chute. |
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The line skiiers left had evidence of old turns in it so we went to the line on the right and took turns visually belaying each other on the way down. The snow was unbelievable.
| Matt continuing down in fine style. Mt. St. Helens in the background. |
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| More turns at about 9500 feet. |
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Just above 8K the snow started getting dirty - you could clearly see where the rain-snow line had existed the previous week.
| Above the basin at the base of the Chutes. The rain-snow line from the previous storm can be seen (to the right) about 500 more feet below. |
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We crossed the lower angle stuff below the Chutes making turns around the increasing number of small rocks that had rolled off the ridge above.
| The clean newer snow in the Chutes above in stark contrast with the "snirt" lower down. |
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Once below about 6800 feet the snow began to pinch off and the skiis were traded in in favor of foot travel. After some sub-alpine thrashing through the vegetables and loose scree in this narrow drainage, we soon met up with the Round-the-Mountain trail and made the traverse back to the climbers trail and then down to the trailhead.
| We're squeezin' the udders here on the last piece of continuous snow just above the treeline. |
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We were both pretty obliterated after nearly 11 hours of continuous effort
and cursing the downclimb, but all pain and suffering were forgotten soon
enough when we spotted Matt's white van. The couple of "friends" we left on
ice didn't hurt the unravelling process a lot either.