Paradise Glacier Mt Rainier

It kind of looked like there was going to be a lull in the weather on the Tuesday following Memorial Day, following a small disturbance and before the heat wave.  And so it was, with a clear day and no wind anywhere on the snowfield all the way to Camp Muir.  Not having any available partners I went alone, camping at Cougar Rock the night before so as to get an earlier start.  I managed to start up about 7:30 on pretty crunchy snow, which made for easy skinning.  The Panorama Point face was still in shadow which sometimes means a sketchy icy bit, but today you could kick a step and make an impression.  I elected to go up the slope to the left of the main route with about 100' of booting on the steepest bit.  From there I never took skis off again.  There was no crowd to speak of, nothing like what I see on a weekend sometimes.  While I felt old and slow, time to Muir was 4:10 which I rate as not bad.

After a long break I headed down towards the Paradise Glacier route.  So unlike the Muir snowfield, this route once again was smooth and white.  It would have been better to have headed down a couple hours earlier as the melt was on, all earlier crunchiness dispatched. It's not normal to get to Muir then take a layer off before heading down.  The warm front was so very apparent in part due to the complete lack of wind.

I didn't take any pictures on the way down.  Main thing to note is that coverage is excellent, with four feet of snow still covering the Paradise Valley road.  This route should be just fine for a few more weeks.  It was near perfect weather for this outing.