Russell Glacier

I won’t get into the specifics, but we started hiking a lot later than planned. By 11pm, we were finally out of Spray Park and skinning along the lower reaches of the Flett Glacier. Finding a suitable place to camp meant a place that was kind of flat on the snow – beggars can’t be choosers at 1am in the morning. Tim set up a tent and I dug some “flatness” into the snow, threw down my Thermarest and went to sleep while gazing at the stars.

The next morning we set out and skinned up the Flett and onto the Russell Glacier. We made it up to knob at 9,200ft and settled in for some food and relief from the sun. We had nice ski down the Russell, avoiding the small cracks starting to open up. The end of the ski run found us perched atop a large waterfall, which I think was in Seattle Park area. We skinned back up and over to the Flett and skied back down to camp and settled in for cheese and wine whilst watching the alpenglow on Mount Rainier. The next morning we debated getting a quick ski in on the Flett, but there were low lying clouds obstructing our visibility, and we decided to head out.