June 14-15, 2003, Mount Adams, South Climb ski

Seven of us, packed in two cars, left the parking lot of QFC in  Capitol Hill at 7:44 pm on Friday. Ingrid, my navigator, unfolds road directions to Trout Lake taken from MapQuest.  This is my third trip to Mnt. Adams and I don't remember the exact details of the drive, but what I do remember is that it was straightforward. The MapQuest directions spread across a couple of pages. After a few hours of driving, we begin our travel on dirt road 23, just past Randle.  Instead of following it to Trout Lake, we follow the MapQuest directions instead, which put us on dirt road 21, then onto dirt road 56, followed by SIX painfully slow miles of travel on somewhat overgrown rough road 5601.  The six miles were abusive to Matt's low-clearance Subi, the second vehicle.  Afterwards, we run into dirt road 2329, stop to ponder for a bit, consult the WA Gazetteer, and then finally find our way back to 23. Four hours and 20 minutes later, we were filling out climbing permits at the ranger station and picking up our hot lunch sacks.  Note to self: beware of MapQuest directions.

In the morning, we drove to Morrison Creek campground.  The road was snow free so we continued, but stopped about 1/4 mile past where everybody else stopped.  I find out later that it would have been possible to drive to within 1/2 mile of Coldsprings campground.  A fallen tree blocks the road.

By 11 am, we're booting and bush whacking from 4700'.  Around 5200', we're skinning through patchy snow.  Scattered clouds overhead, but the other than that, the weather was beautiful.  We made camp around 7500', near the base of the small Crescent Glacier.  After 1.5 hours of relaxing, a handful of us decided to go skiing. We skinned up to Lunch Counter and skied back to camp.  The corn was great, even late in the afternoon.

It was completely clear on Sunday. We started out at 7am. As we climbed, the snow started to soften.  Unfortunately, above Pikers Peak, it didn't look like good corn skiing.  A layer of small ice chunks blanketed the snow.  Even with clear skies in mid-afternoon it didn't soften much above Pikers Peak. We skied from the summit.  The first part of the ski was interesting, but fun. The descent from Pikers Peak to camp was incredibly good, turn after turn.  Here's a video of the ski down: http://www.leang.com/kam/gallery/movies/

Overall, an excellent ski.  There is still plenty of coverage and by this weekend, the road should be clear to Coldsprings campground.

-kam