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Once is enough

Partner: Ben Peters
Mileage: 31
Gain: 13894'
Elapsed Time: 13:51
Start time: 3:30 AM
Approach/deproach: Bike ride then dryland walk 

Ski Gear: Light but not race gear
Technical Gear: Two Petzl Gullies, Petzl Irvis hybrid crampons , glacier and rappelling gear
Rope: 30m Rad
Pack: Pretty light, but a stove and warm clothes as always

Start: Mt Rainier westside road gate (2100')
Finish: Start
Dryland: First a bike ride of about 5 miles then hiking for about 3. Snow came quick once we hit the wonderland. Note that the Tahoma Creek Trail we used is washed out and no longer maintained. It worked just fine, but at times you are rock-hopping in the river bed. Bikes are mandatory for the westside road. 

It's probably obvious from this blog that I really like skiing on Mount Rainier and that includes some of the more obscure lines. I had read Sky's old TRs about the Sunset Amphitheater Couloir (hitherto referred to as the SAC) and was interested in checking out a part of the mountain I had only ever traversed. Starting at paradise is totally doable, but you end up traversing way around to get back and coming from the westside road seemed like it would make for interesting exploration. I hate crowds too... no crowds approaching this way.  

SAC seems like the sort of place where one wants to spend as little time as possible, being surrounded by crumbling cliffs and all so we wanted to approach via a different route. Tahoma glacier seemed like the obvious choice and it would also be cool to check it out so we decided to go up the Tahoma and traverse over to Liberty Cap and the SAC. We were having a nice morning with only a little route faffing when I saw a big serac collapse right by the top of the mountain. It came off lookers right of the Tahoma glacier, there is a cliff/serac interface there. At first it seemed like we should be ok, then we got worried and sprinted to the north, in the end we were totally fine, but it was exciting, especially when the air blast hit us along with fine ice particles. Rainier is a real mountain, don't let anyone tell you otherwise. If you are headed up or down the Tahoma I recommend you look at the map below. 

Whew, morning excitement over we started a slog up the Tahoma Glacier headwall. Already about 10k' into the day it was going to be a slog (you know, like slogging), didn't help we came out a little too fast. The ascent was grueling but we got it done. The serac exposure goes away as soon as you get on the headwall, so that's nice. I will definitely come back and ski this some day, it's a classic WA glacier route. We kept thinking we were running early for warming so we opted to hit the summit. Took a few minutes and headed over to Liberty Cap. We had tracks to follow and it seemed like there were tracks coming out of the SAC when we were below so we thought our chances of getting first tracks were likely ruined : ( 

Nearing the top of the Tahoma Glacier Headwall

On top of LR there were two sets of tracks headed north... interesting. We cautiously worked our way down looking for the entrance to SAC, which is not straightforward. There are a bunch of false entrances which cliff before. We ended up finding what looked like a transition and downclimb from one party and thought we were likely on the couloir. Second set of tracks appeared to drop on to the Mowich Face, way to go whoever skied that!

The downclimb looked terrible, steep rhyme and loose rock, yuck. We went one gully further and saw magical snow. We couldn't drop the whole thing as it wasn't actually the SAC and ended in a massive cliff but it seemed like we would be able to drop a bit and head over to SAC. Ben took one for the team and went first to check it out. 

Thankfully Rainier has such solid rock...

Turns out it went and connected. I followed and we got our last moment of safety hanging out on a small ridge. Things had really been warming up and there were rocks rolling down all over the place. Not all bad news, first the snow was getting a little over-ripe which slowed down the rocks, second, they just weren't that big, lots of grapefruit sized stuff. We were in it now though and it seemed like the fastest way out was through. Ben dropped and I told him I would give him 3 mins and drop myself. 

In our defense, Ben had flown by the mountain the morning before in his small plane and this route had looked significantly more clean. We were hitting a nasty heatwave though and things were changing fast. I dropped in amidst what sounded like a slow moving river of rocks (does it sound better if I call them stones?) and proceeded to hit several on every turn. Ski fast, jump the schrund and get the hell out of there, thankfully the couloir isn't actually that long (1100'). It was all fine, but had more of a Russian roulette vibe than I like. Yep, check it off the list and never go back. 

We needed to traverse south to get back to the Tahoma and avoid the worst of the crevasses. My hopes of quality skiing were dashed by all the icy serac collapse debris. That area is a gnarly place. We found our way down and back to the Tahoma where the skiing was genuinely fun. 

SAC is pretty short and we we rejoined the Tahoma at about 11k' so there was a lot of skiing left to do. As always happens around here the snow did end up getting sloppy and grabby from pollen, maybe 2/3 of the way down the Tahoma. It's ok there was some truly glorious corn up higher. We reversed our approach and skied as fast as we could. We came up short on the coveted 10k fall line run by a couple hundred feet since we had started at Liberty Cap. Coming off the summit we would have been very close. It also helped that Ben is always willing to ski over moss and jump creeks to eek every bit of vert he can out of the run. 

Beautiful views of the mountain on the way out and easier route finding during the day helped with a very tired exit. 

A nice downhill bike deproach greeted us, with only a hand full of logs to cross, ugh. What a cool day in an amazing place. It would have been a massive weekend on the south side with a thousand plus headed to Muir. We saw exactly two other people. 

I'm going back for the Tahoma sometime, but probably good on the Sunset Amphitheater Couloir.