Russell Glacier turns

Visited the Mowich Lake zone to put September turns on the book.  The Mowich Lake trailhead had quite a few parking spots left upon our arrival, while the Tolmie Peak trailhead was buzzing with the Insta-crowd activity (left the Seattle/Eastside before 6 AM).  Upon seeing the Flett coverage (not continuous), we opted to hike up the Climbers trail directly to the Echo/Observation rock showfield and started skinning from here, about 5.2 miles in.  There were two carries to reach Russell glacier and to our disappointment, quite a lot of glacial ice with crevasses was showing even here.  But that actually turned out to be blessing in disguise because we decided on skiing an obvious line from the first Ptarmigan bump down to the toe of Russell glacier.  Which was great skiing with small to manageable suncups and allowed us to visit the place  normally bypassed when one follows the Ptarmigan Ridge towards the Russell headwall.  Happy smiles were soon replaced by grim faces on the long and dusty hike-out (but memories of that fade soon).