Inspired by a talk I had with Ned Randolph (First to ski the Tahoma Glacier on Rainier) about three weeks ago, I decided this high pressure with lousy skiing conditions, was a perfect oppurtunity to go explore the Fryingpan Creek drainage and the Cowlitz Chimneys on the east side of Rainier.
Without a sled I loaded the first chair at Crystal with my partner Rhett and headed out towards the throne to start our descent down towards the Crystal Lakes Trail. This was my first time dropping off Crystal to 410 and found it to be rather easy access to the CL Trail and down to the White River Road. We were able to skate ski most of the road down to the Fryingpan Creek TH.
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| The view from the White River Road of the Cowlitz Chimneys |
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Although having a sled would make this trip a lot easier it really isn't that bad of an approach dropping off the backside of Crystal. We set up camp about 3 miles up the Fryingpan Creek.
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| Rhett jumping across the Creek |
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| Rhett booting up the couloir |
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| Rhett looking down the bottom bit of the couloir |
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Although it was only Dec 6th with a relatively shallow snowpack, we thought conditions would've been reasonable in the north facing couloir. Once in couloir there was three small rock steps filled in with ice that we had to down climb. My own personal ski ethics are to want to ski a couloir like this one in good style without having to down climb when a full ski descent is possible later on in the season. With conditions getting firmer we decided to head down a little less than half way up the couloir.
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| Rhett skinning up Fryingpan Creek | |
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I was never really expecting the skiing to be all that great but it was fun to get back out there and spend a night exploring new terrain and getting some pics of other terrain to go explore in the future. Big thanks to the NPS for giving us a ride out and saving us about eight miles!
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| Mt. Tamanos (needing some more snow!) |
