TAY 32.4 (2020.63) - Quick Trip up to Camp Muir in the Schmooooo
Fun trip up to Camp Muir today. First to the “top” with 2:20 to Muir and 3:13 round trip.
My original plan was to go fast but not so fast that I felt like I was straining. I took my absolute lightest setup. I had in the back of my mind a 3 hour goal to get to Muir. But as I noticed I'd gone about 2000ft in one hour, I was excited that I could do sub-2:30... I kept it pretty chill and just kept moving. The last 500ft though it got harder to keep the pace because the surface was all ice... I slipped several times, so I had to slow down and be more deliberate and really stomp in my steps.
The top 500ft is ice, everything below that is schmooo. I also heard about a dozen whoomps on Muir... is that a thing? I mean, it's super low angle, so I didn't feel like there was a risk... but it was freaky to hear the whoomp and feel the snow shift under my skis.
Also a reminder of how fast weather can change in the alpine. I reach Camp Muir in relatively clear skies. As soon as I started to transition the wind picked up to 40+mph and it started hailing on me, and then clouds engulfed me. I had near whiteout conditions for the first 500ft skiing down and went way skiers right toward the Nisqually glacier, even though I was trying to go slow. I stopped at one point and actually got vertigo and couldn't tell what was up or down... first time I ever had that happen.
Would have been faster on the return if it weren’t for 500ft of complete whiteout and 4000ft of schmoooo. And I saw a cute bear on the road to Paradise.
Nice fast time to Muir, dang! I hate schmoo. This helps my FOMO
Speedy!
Whiteouts up there are no joke! My first experience with an absolute pure whiteout was a few years ago in Edith Basin when skiing back to Paradise. Low angle, so we were skiing slow and at points you couldn't even tell if you were moving or not. Or up from down. So trippy. At one point, after regrouping to get our bearings, my partner set off in the complete opposite direction that we were originally heading. I was doing the navigating so had to correct him, but he had no clue and thought he was going in the right direction. Definitely an eye opening experience and I can see how easy it is to get lost and off course when caught in one.
re: whiteouts on Muir snowfield... I also learned that fall line actually takes you into the Nisqually Glacier... so don't do that!
This is a common problem descending from Muir, and people have gone missing following the fall line in bad visibility. You should be able to find a simple map of the area with compass readings back to the parking lot--it's been posted here and elsewhere, but I forget where it originated (possibly the Park Service, who doesn't like running body recovery searches). The fact that you were up there alone and didn't already know this suggests poor preparation.
A similar thing happens on Mt. Hood, although the consequences are less severe--people drop fall line and end up wandering around the logging roads west of Timberline. On Baker, the fall line leads you to fields of crevasses rather than Ptarmigan Ridge, and there are endless other examples. It's a function of skiing stratovolcanoes.
And yes, whomping on low-angle terrain is indeed a thing. It sounds like you should know more about that, too, since it strongly implies stability issues, including the potential for remote releases.
I don't know you, and I'm no expert. Your trip reports are a welcome relief in this time of emergence (we hope) from pandemic and Turns-All-Year website revival. I appreciate the quality of images as well as your descriptions of snow conditions--more entertaining and far more valuable than the ones which consist only of one or two photos and an announcement of where someone's been skiing. But I'm alarmed on your behalf, and it's likely that so are others here. I hope this is received in the constructive spirit in which it's intended, and I welcome you to snarl at me in the event that it's not.
[/pompous pontificating]
Enjoy!
Mark
Mark - thanks for the concern. But I was aware of potential dangers, and am/was experienced enough to know how to handle it. I've skied muir at least a dozen times, and am aware of how to navigate in a white out. I had my compass, I had my GPS. My description was more dramatic than it was. My comment about fall line was more of a "I knew this intellectually, but experienced it empirically for the first time"...
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