Distance: 15.9 mi.
Elevation Gain: 9100 ft.
Knowing that there are only two walk-up campsites available for the Little Tahoma Zone in Mount Rainier National Park, we got to the Paradise Ranger Station right at 7 AM. We managed to nab one of the two spots, although we’re pretty sure the other one wasn’t used. The Ranger mentioned that he wasn’t aware of anyone else using that camping zone so far this year because the north side road to White River hasn’t opened yet. It is supposed to open May 24 I believe.
By the time we got permits and packed up all our gear, we started actually hiking around 9 AM. We brought boots and snowshoes for this adventure, but it would be very amenable to a backcountry ski (and we saw a handful of ski tracks all the way to the summit block). The hike toward Cowlitz Rocks was straightforward with snowshoes except for one creek crossing below cornices. At this point in the morning, we weren’t especially worried about the cornices dropping but it was a very warm day. We reached the base of Cowlitz Rocks at 11 AM.
We went over the west ridge of Cowlitz Rocks, removed our snowshoes, and made a mushy 1,000 ft descent into the lower Cowlitz and Ingraham Glacier basin. We traversed NE to climb the glacier’s lateral moraine, and then zig-zagged north above the moraine until we found a nice rock outcropping for lunch. There was a fair amount of running water along the rocks in this area. It was brutally hot for so early in the season, without the faintest cloud or breeze, but it was a spectacular day to be outside.
We continued climbing until we reached a flat area at about 8,000 feet at 3 PM. We considered stopping for the day but decided that we had enough mojo to climb a bit further, making our summit day shorter, albeit with more time carrying overnight gear. We found piles of scree to smooth out for our tent and bivy on a moraine that juts out west of the Whitman Crest, and then got to work melting 7 L worth of snow. Good thing we brought a lot of fuel! Craig noticed four headlamps on the SE ridge of Little Tahoma at 12:30 AM, but we never saw the party. Maybe they were heading down already?
We got up at 4 AM for an alpine start, and the snow was in good condition for booting up. We left our snowshoes behind at camp. We reached the lower snow slope of Little Tahoma just as the sun was starting to rise.
We were able to follow old ski tracks on the lower part of the slope, but Craig started kicking nice steps in for us when it got steeper. There weren’t any open crevasses on the face, but there were some easily avoidable ones on the left. We reached the top of the lower snowfield at 8:45 AM.
We crossed a small patch of snow-free rocks and then entered the upper snowfield. The snow up here was a little firmer but we were able to climb it fairly easily with our crampons on. We bent around to the right to reach the base of our scramble to the summit. All in all we only had about 100 ft of rock to scramble this early in the season. The scramble started off essentially flat, and then Craig slung a horn on the false summit in order to protect the final scramble to the true summit (where he slung another horn and Nancy and I prussiked across). It wouldn’t have been all that hair-raising to do this scramble without protection, but we had the gear with us.
After enjoying the warm, sunny summit for a few minutes we scrambled back down to the upper snow slope, where we had stashed our packs and snow gear. We kept crampons on for the whole descent as the snow was still fairly firm. We descended down Craig’s earlier steps for the steeper portion of the lower snowfield. As the slope flattened out, the snow got a lot softer. We saw our friends who had planned to meet us ascending down below, but they skied back down before we reached them! We found out later it was because Rodrigo had dropped his sunglasses and didn’t want to go blind.
We kept some elevation while we traversed left (north) toward the ridge to Whitman Crest. We scoped out one possible ascent route but it looked extremely steep, so we descended a bit back toward camp and then climbed another snow finger to the ridge further east. We did a short scramble on very crumbly, untrustworthy rock until we reached the summit. Then we saw a maybe easier way down so we headed off the other side of the ridge. We descended about 50 ft of soft scree where there appeared to be a boot track until we arrived at another snow finger even further south than the one we ascended. We pretty much had a straight line from there to camp, so we decided to arrive quickly on our tushies. The glissade was a little speedier than I’d prefer, but at least there were no hazards at the bottom of the slope to worry about.
We had lunch, packed up camp, and got moving again around noon. The snow was pretty sloppy on our descent but the snowshoes were mostly helpful. We took them off for some steeper sections. We noticed a new, giant pile of avy debris that hadn’t been there the day before, most likely from a cornice dropping. So we moved through the slope quickly.
We reached the Cowlitz-Ingraham Glacier basin again at 1:30 and then had a disheartening 1,000 ft climb ahead of us back to the NW ridge of Cowlitz Rocks. Craig led the way and we slowly trudged behind in his steps, which were pretty bomber in the steep slush.
We made quick progress of the gentle descent back toward Paradise, but soon noticed that several cornices had newly fallen in the past 24 hours. It was a little cooler than the previous day, but we were in no mood to linger in this area. We reached the creek crossing that we hadn’t thought much about the day before, only to realize that the largest, most terrifying cornice of all hung precariously right above the creek. There would be no surviving if we got swept into the creek, so we moved across the snow bridge as quickly as humanely possible, and one by one. Definitely something to consider if you head out this way anytime soon…
Photo: Nancy Kleint
The remainder of the descent was straightforward and we had plenty of tracks to follow. I glissaded one final steeper slope while Craig and Nancy booted it. We made it out at 4:45 PM.
(Download the free Gaia GPS app on your phone to view tracks and then get a Gaia GPS membership if you want offline access. Discount below!)
Recommended brew: Uinta Hop Nosh
Gear Used:
- Aluminum ice axe (Craig and Vanessa)
- Backpacking tent/Bivy
- Gaiters
- Glacier glasses
- GPS
- Harness
- Helmet
- Mountaineering boots
- Pickets (not used)
- Prusiks
- 30 m half-rope
- Sleeping pad
- Snowshoes
- Steel crampons
- Steel ice axe (Nancy)
- Stove
- Trekking poles
- Water drops
- Winter sleeping bag
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