April 2, 2008, MRNP Van Trump Park Mush Fest
4/2/08
WA Cascades West Slopes South (Mt Rainier)
1476
1
Jim (JimH), Chris (CMS) and I decided to take advantage of the nice forecast today and head out to Mt. Rainier. After a lot of debate about where to go, we opted to head up to Van Trump Park looking for some nice open slopes and some great turns. We found plenty of the former... with lots of mushy snow... and little of the latter.
We arrived at the park around 8:30AM, finding the Longmire gate already open at that time. A small bit of climbing was needed to gain the snow slope from the parking lot at the Christine Falls parking area (there is lot of snow there). We opted to follow the Burgdorfer's alternate route up to Van Trump Park rather than going up by the main route that takes you below Comet falls. We found really easy skinning in the trees heading up to the ridge on soft snow in beautiful light with the sun breaking through in spots. After gaining the ridge at around 4700 feet, we continued skinning up to Van Trump Park, eventually breaking out of the trees about 2 hours after starting. We were initially excited as the snow in the clearing was nice and soft, but as soon as we continued further up the ridge past Mildred point it got very wet and heavy as temps warmed up very quickly in all the heavy sun exposure. By the time the terrain unfolded to us more and we realized the better, safer slopes lay across Van Trump Creek on the other ridge, we couldn't find any slopes we felt were safe for descending into and then crossing the valley. Lots of wet, heavy snow on steepish slopes and plenty of sloughs being seen all around us. We worked our way up to about 6200 feet on the ridge eventually running into an obstacle we didn't feel was safe in the warming conditions and eventually opting to head back down. We found lots of wet, heavy snow and occasional pockets of soft powder in the shade.
We then made a short attempt to try and get across the creek in a safer location lower down but as all we were finding was wet, heavy snow in any sun-exposed terrain, we decided to call it a day and head back, hoping the forest down to the car would provide some nice turns to end the day. Well... by the time we hit it, there was a sufficient mixture of conditions including soft powder, wet much, crust and craters to make it a sufficiently interesting descent.
So... not many turns but hard to argue too much with a blue bird day with good people in a beautiful location.
It seems like things still need some time to consolidate and I'd expect a nice crust the next morning or two on anything that got a lot of sun today.
We arrived at the park around 8:30AM, finding the Longmire gate already open at that time. A small bit of climbing was needed to gain the snow slope from the parking lot at the Christine Falls parking area (there is lot of snow there). We opted to follow the Burgdorfer's alternate route up to Van Trump Park rather than going up by the main route that takes you below Comet falls. We found really easy skinning in the trees heading up to the ridge on soft snow in beautiful light with the sun breaking through in spots. After gaining the ridge at around 4700 feet, we continued skinning up to Van Trump Park, eventually breaking out of the trees about 2 hours after starting. We were initially excited as the snow in the clearing was nice and soft, but as soon as we continued further up the ridge past Mildred point it got very wet and heavy as temps warmed up very quickly in all the heavy sun exposure. By the time the terrain unfolded to us more and we realized the better, safer slopes lay across Van Trump Creek on the other ridge, we couldn't find any slopes we felt were safe for descending into and then crossing the valley. Lots of wet, heavy snow on steepish slopes and plenty of sloughs being seen all around us. We worked our way up to about 6200 feet on the ridge eventually running into an obstacle we didn't feel was safe in the warming conditions and eventually opting to head back down. We found lots of wet, heavy snow and occasional pockets of soft powder in the shade.
We then made a short attempt to try and get across the creek in a safer location lower down but as all we were finding was wet, heavy snow in any sun-exposed terrain, we decided to call it a day and head back, hoping the forest down to the car would provide some nice turns to end the day. Well... by the time we hit it, there was a sufficient mixture of conditions including soft powder, wet much, crust and craters to make it a sufficiently interesting descent.
So... not many turns but hard to argue too much with a blue bird day with good people in a beautiful location.
It seems like things still need some time to consolidate and I'd expect a nice crust the next morning or two on anything that got a lot of sun today.
Thanks for the TR iluka! Thanks also to you and Chris for all the trail breaking we shared in the whipped butter snow we had.
It was great to be out in the sunshine, even if we never quite got where we wanted to go. That side of the mountain is really impressive, and it was kinda fun to watch the sloughs running into Kautz Creek from the ridge as we played out our last route finding cards at 6k. The views were just awesome. Maybe it was all some kind of Zen counterpoint to the ridiculous pow I had all last week.
All in all, a good day.
It was great to be out in the sunshine, even if we never quite got where we wanted to go. That side of the mountain is really impressive, and it was kinda fun to watch the sloughs running into Kautz Creek from the ridge as we played out our last route finding cards at 6k. The views were just awesome. Maybe it was all some kind of Zen counterpoint to the ridiculous pow I had all last week.
All in all, a good day.
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