Easton Glacier

I had been warned about the snowmobiles and boy were there a lot of them. Not that I mind people snowmobiling, it just takes away from the mountain solitude I enjoy and makes me think of the city. Supposedly, the snow mobiles are not allowed up after more of the trail melts out, but we were there a little too early.

Our skin up required navigating through the forest, which was difficult with the pine needles scattered over the sun pocked, but still relatively frozen snow. Once out of the forest, it proved an easy skin up to shoulder where we decided to set camp. We had time for a quick skin and ski above camp, although the pitch was not quite step enough given the slushy snow. Settling down for dinner and the whining of snowmobiles, we enjoyed the beginnings of a sunset before settling in the tent for the night.

We got a fairy early start, and followed the skin track we had laid the night before. Higher up, there were some open crevasses, but they were few and far between, and we slowly made our way up the mountain. As we neared 10,000 feet, the cloud cover increased and the snow was frozen solid. After a nice break, we decided to ski down, as the rest of the climb would be ice axe and crampons up, and I was doubtful we would be skiing down. The ski was nice a little lower once the snow softened up. As soon as we were back at the tent and packing up, the sun came out again. But after my experience on Emmonds Glacier the year before, I wasn’t about to ski icy glaciers with open crevasses. The ski down from the tent was interesting, with a lot of debris in the forest. I ended up going slightly off course after finding a decent gully to ski, and we had to hike 30 minutes through the forest to back to the car. I had my GPS with me, and although I had a good idea where we were, it was reassuring to be able to whip out the GPS and see where we were in relation to our end point.