Over and back, Kulshan

A friend and I enjoyed a long outing on Kulshan yesterday.

We climbed up the CD and dropped from Grant peak into the crater for an excellent corn run. From the crater, a short skin to the col led to a muddy climb up Sherman by its West ridge. We skied from near the summit down the S face onto the Squak, working down the skier's left side of the Squak to about 7.8k' on the glacial ramp. Near the bottom of our run we avoided one of the steepest slopes, because the snow was less supportive and starting to move with ski cuts.

Here we hung out and brewed lots of water. I took off my boots to let me feet dry out. The day was spectacular, warm and calm but with some high clouds keeping it from being too hot. We recharged our bodies and listened to music to get psyched for more hard work.

This ramp feature is a beautiful connector from near where the bottom of the Talum leads back to the main Squak climb route. We toured upwards and joined the route right at the 8.8k' crux crevasse. The slog continued upwards. We admired our tracks from the crater. Onwards and upwards, we kept skinning all the way back to the snow dome. 

We were pretty worked by this point. The watch was showing 5 pm, and my partner's feet were hurting. So we called this the end of the climbing for the day and skied down the Roman wall onto the Deming glacier. There was excellent corn on the wall and the first part of the glacier. We painfully sidestepped at one point to get onto pumice ridge, then it was home free skiing down the Coleman glacier on reasonable mush. Around 7.4k the snow got sticky and slow (I don't think it was pollen but just wet). Still, we managed to ski reasonably quickly down to the moraine trail. We walked down a little ways before putting skis back on and skiing to our shoes next to the creek.

It was a good day out. I was hoping to beat my personal record of vert skied, but the tally at the end of the day was about 11.5k which is just under my earlier record. There was some really quality corn on the top of the mountain, and the deeper wet snow we skied was generally supportive and smooth albeit slow at times. Conditions are still quite good up there but it'll be changing fast.

There are some smaller sun cups below 8000', but above there it's smooth where there aren't boot and old ski tracks. We walked in the summer trail to nearly continuous snow at Heliotrope creek. We carried ice axe and crampons but never used them (also had 2 small ropes & glacier gear). We found running water very high, but the stove was nice to have.

Get it while you can!

I am sore.