It was predicted to be a warm couple days that I had off of work and Tyler Jones (RMI guide) had just returned to Ashford from a couple of months in Alaska, so we decided to ski Mt. Rainier. The night before our ski we headed up Copper Creek Road to check out our intended descent via the Tahoma Glacier from Glacier View. Spotting scope in tow, we planned our route and how to avoid the end-of-June crevasses. We got up early the next morning to drop a car off at the parking area on the Westside Road where we would finish up the following afternoon. We drove the other vehicle up to the Paradise parking area to start the climb. Our ascent route consisted of dropping onto the Nisqually Glacier, crossing over to the Wilson Glacier, and heading up the Fuhrer Finger. The Fuhrer Finger was fairly thin and sun-cupped at the time. There was also a fair bit of rockfall to dodge. We left skis on until arriving at the Finger and proceeded to boot pack the remainder of the way to our camp.
We camped near the top of the Finger on the Nisqually Tower. We had some delicious cold pizza, snacks, and water before an afternoon nap to get out of the sun.
The views were great looking 200ft down onto the Nisqually Glacier and watching the sunset over Mt. Adams with the moon on the rise. We got up at a relaxed 7:00 am, made a quick breakfast and headed towards the Wapowety Cleaver. Again a warm day with low winds, we came up to the east summit in a baselayer. We had topped out in the late morning, leaving us a couple hours to hang out on the summit while we waited for the snow conditions to become ripe for the skiing.
We set up the tent on top for a bit and dried out our boots. At two o’clock we clicked into our skis and prepped for the descent. We faced north towards Liberty Cap, then headed skier’s left towards the top of the Sickle feature of the upper Tahoma Glacier.
The skiing conditions were phenomenal…super smooth for the entirety of the descent save some crunchy wind-blown snow for the first 300ft off of the summit. We cruised down the lower Tahoma Glacier, floating around or over crevasses reaching the end of the snow at 4,800ft. Here we swapped our ski boots out for approach shoes and started hiking down the loose rocks of the Tahoma Creek bed.
The descent on foot was scenic, but involved some interesting 5.6 mud moves as well as some low friction volcanic dusty slab. We linked up with the Wonderland Trail where it crosses Tahoma Creek to take us out towards Westside Road and eventually my car. After retrieving the other car up at Paradise, it was back to Ashford for dinner. - Laura, Whittaker Mountaineering
