One of my goals is to summit all 5 Washington volcanoes in 2016, so far I’ve done a Mt. St. Helens ski descent with Pete, and attempted Glacier Peak with Pete, Luke and Scott. Needless to say, Mt. St. Helens is a bit easier since the entire top half of it is missing, and Glacier was a no go, so I had been feeling a bit like *shrug* about my efforts so far. In addition, I’d had an Adams weekend and a Baker weekend both called off because of weather. So when I saw a good weather window for Memorial Day weekend in the southwest of WA, I dashed off a text to Luke and Pete to see if they wanted to do a quick 1.5 day trip to Adams and take advantage! A couple days later, I had lunch with an old high school friend, Jay, and he mentioned he was hoping to get out skiing before the season got too shoddy. We took off Sunday around 1 pm, hoping to get a chance to stop at Instagram Creek Falls (ahem, sorry, Panther Creek Falls), and also grab some dinner at White Salmon/Hood River before arriving at camp.
Of course, as usual we were slower than we expected due to a great time at Everybody’s Brewing and we rolled into the Cold Springs Campground at about 10:30 pm.
LUCKILY, Luke’s friends Scott and Tiffany had staked out a perfect campsite with a fire and space for two more tents, so we joined them, and crawled into our sleeping bags – where I promptly started snoring, much to Luke’s chagrin.
We set our alarms for 3:30 the next morning and stumbled around getting our clothes on and our Mountain House breakfasts heated up. We hit the trail around 5ish and wound our way through an old burn for about 3/4 of a mile before we hit snow and began skinning.
The climb was ~6700 feet over the course of roughly 6.4 miles, and I felt GREAT until I reached about 10k feet. At this time the elevation started really getting to me and I started a slower pace. Meanwhile Pete had once again proved his mental toughness by deciding to summit despite the fact that his binding broke. The perfect clear day, and views of Hood, Thielsen, and Helens kept me going despite my mental and physical exhaustion. Interestingly, my lungs and heart felt great, but my legs were BURNING.
As I came over the false summit, well behind Luke, Pete, and Jay, I started to smell my own noxious fumes. In fact, they were so strong, and so pervasive, that Jay’s offhand comment about me destroying what little oxygen was available at that elevation had me wondering if I had in fact, shit my pants. After finally getting my slow butt up to the true summit, an old-timer mentioned that the little shack buried under rime ice and snow was actually used as a shelter for sulfur miners for a short time. Imagine how excited I was to find out that I didn’t shit my pants! Almost as excited as reaching the summit of my first volcano!
Jay, Luke, and myself transitioned to skis, meanwhile Pete had begun the walk/glissade down. We decided to opt out of the SW chutes descent in the interest of taking a direct route and not letting Pete beat us down by too much! We managed to find a fun line, and the conditions were perfect until the last 1000 feet or so. Basically timed the corn cycle perfectly, and my body felt instantly better after dropping below 8000 feet, other than the still burning legs. Jay and Luke both reaffirmed by example that I realllllly need to learn how to actually ski instead of making wonky turns down every slope. Still had a ton of fun and loved exploring the cool volcanic/glacial terrain!
https://www.instagram.com/p/BGFGEt4P8my/?taken-by=pnw_dentist
As we began the long drive back to Seattle, I looked back at Adams and reveled in the accomplishment of finally getting my 2nd volcano down! And it was a big one, too 🙂
patricknygren.wordpress.com 