4/2/02
I can never seem to remember exactly how long it takes to get from my house to the Marble Mountain Sno-Park, a nervous feeling that usually causes me to leave even more insanely early. Jon and I were on the road at 3:30 AM. This actually wound up being a pretty good thing, as daylight was very early in arriving, and we had some unplanned backtracking to do after we rolled right by the (very clearly marked) turnoff for the trailhead.
| Everyone knows that the best place for ski bases is dry pavement |
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Pretty cold morning - some melt ice laying around in the parking lot. This was all good as it would keep the snow firm on the climb up and allow us to (hopefully) hit the corn harvest perfectly. We pounded out the now very familiar approach to treeline quickly, and were greeted with a beautiful cloudless and already very bright view of the mountain.
| So close but yet so far . . . 4 more hours of climbing to go. |
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| Fiddling with gear - recent cornice failure and wet-loose slide in the background |
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It's always a little alarming to realize how much work remains . . . when you reach treeline the summit looks like a short walk away. In reality, the entirety of the climb is about 5500 vertical feet & its duration is dictated by the amount of suffering you are interested in. There are no technical issues; it's a perfect place to spend some time exploring the region surrounding anaerobic punchiness (especially when your level of fitness is sort of comically poor, as mine is at the moment).
| Nose to the grindstone on the skin up - Worm Flows below |
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Fortunately we found a split-board skin track that was mondo enough to get us to the top in a hurry but not so aggressive that we had to deal with a bunch of backsliding. We were able to skin all the way to the summit.
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A few translations . . . "We've gotta be almost there" = 2000 more feet "Maybe 15 more minutes" = 1200 more feet "I'm cooked" = anywhere from 200 - 4000 more feet |
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The sight of the volcano's crater yawning below and all of the scenery around always warrants some time up there, especially when conditions are nearly perfect.
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An idiots' tutorial on the geophysics and tectonics of the North American Plate
"So then, like, the whole lid thing just kinda popped off!" |
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Aside from a few gusts at the top, the temperature was perfectly comfortable, maybe borderline balmy. A bit of high overcast did come in, which kind of played havoc with my camera's lightmeter
| Looking across the crater toward Mt. Rainier - Spirit Lake below |
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Nearly 6000 vertical feet of perfect spring corn snow lay below us, so we packed up and made our way off the summit.
| "Dude, don't you have any more meat-gum? I'm totally bonking" |
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There was actually quite a bit of dust and grit that had been transported out of the crater and onto the SE aspect of the mountain by the wind. So rather than skiing the line that we climbed, we traversed towards monitor ridge and found some better/firmer/cleaner snow and some really excellent steep pitches.
| That's Jon there still standing at the crater rim |
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The snow was soft enough to carve and turn anywhere, but hadn't become so soft in the sunlight yet that we kicked off any wet-loose slides or big wagon- wheels on the way down. There were a few slow moving sluffs but they were easily outrun/outmaneuvered.
| Jon dropping in - Mt. Adams in the background |
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The skiing was absolutely unbelievable. It's always hard to remember what that much vertical feels like on the way down. At first it feels like the skiing is never going to end. Then you just don't want it to end.
| One more turn. About an hour of continous skiing to go. (Jon Carney photo) |
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| Jon on his way to the next feeding frenzy |
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We stitched together about 10 different pitches from a few hundred to nearly 1000 vertical feet at a time, and stopped often (many times due to thigh-screaming) to look back and double-check our work.
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Plowing the fields - a harvest of about 800 vertical feet of Grade 'A'
Washington corn on this pitch alone
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| Looking back on the drive out |
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In Jon's words: "We sewed that mountain up!"