Well, it's almost the end of May but lately the mountain has been looking more like winter! Unseasonable storms have created winter conditions on Rainier - the RMI climb did not leave Camp Muir for a summit bid this morning. Yesterday, two RMI guides ascended part of the route to scout out the conditons. They encountered a lot of windloading of snow, creating high avalanche hazard. Windloading is when the wind picks up snow from the windward side of ridges and deposits that snow on the downwind or leeward side of the terrain - this rapid addition of weight on the snowpack quickly creates high avalanche potential. They made the decision not to climb this morning based on their assessments.
RMI guide, Eric Frank, tells me that on their descent from Camp Muir this morning, visibility on the Muir Snowfield was poor - ranging from a few hundred yards to about 20 feet. Even though the route to Muir is very well wanded right now, the climb was navigating by GPS in the whiteout conditions. Eric says the climbers were post holing in the knee-deep snow on the snowfield.
Here are a few pictures from Paradise today! RMI guide, Win Whittaker is leading a snow school right now and he sent in a few photos of the winter day in Paradise!
Look how deep the snow is!
...and it's still snowing...
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