Jim really likes carrying his board and boots. He also loves wearing sandals in snow.
June 19-20, 2004
Paul Belitz, Jim Jarnagin, Jeremy Miles
The weather over the past month has been piss-poor. Every weekend was nasty. The weekend after my last C-D excursion was devoted to sitting beneath a bridge in Leavenworth, eating ice cream. Ostensibly, we 'attempted' the Ice Cliff Glacier on Stuart, but we didn't get far enough to really call it an attempt. The weekend after that was devoted to studying for finals. Last weekend, the weather was miserable. Jeremy emailed me, since we were both thinking about doing the Coleman-Deming in a whiteout, but we couldn't get excited about the route or the weather. So the end result was that I got no exercise whatsoever for a month. So, what could be better than climbing the North Ridge of Adams, and skiing one of the gnarly north side lines?
Jeremy is a badass, so he was stoked to go. Somehow I thought that I could keep up, so I was game. Jim wanted to get some splitboarding in, it didn't matter where. So, Adams it was. I nursed plans for the S. Lyman Glacier, while Jeremy was thinking NFNWR. We left Seattle at 5:30am on Saturday, hoping to hike in, get some skiing in, and summitting on Sunday. This plan found us at the Killen Creek trailhead at 9. Loading our skis and boots onto our packs, we happily set off down the trail.
After an hour of painful hiking, we hit enough snow to persuade us to start skinning. Jim found this proposal especially attractive considering that he had been hiking through the snowdrifts in sandals.
Jeremy left us in the dust, but after some time we found ourselves at the last trees before the continuous snow. With a flat campsite, phenomenal views, and large packs, we decided to camp here. I pitched my new Betalight, we ditched much of our gear, and we started skinning up the flats, hoping to ski the South America/Big Tuna/Diamond shaped face coming off the North Ridge. After an hour I reached the moraine lake. Jim and Jeremy were ahead, I was getting tired, and the weather was deteriorating, so I sat down on a boulder to rest. Five minutes later I was getting cold. Then it started snowing and hailing. I decided that sitting there would be a bad idea, so I skied down to camp. There it started hailing and raining harder, so I dumped all my gear into the Betalight, crawled in, erected the poles, and lay contentedly on my foam pad, listening to the patter of raindrops.
An hour's worth of rain and hail and sleet and lightning later, the cloud moved on, I poked my head out of the door, and Jeremy skied down with eyes like dinner plates. He and Jim had kept going after the clouds moved in, only to be treated to some electroshock therapy when the cloud made it clear that it was a thunderhead. Buzzing poles, screws, and boulders prompted them to ski down. Their pace was hastened when their hair began to shock them. I smugly noted that I had made the right decision.
Jeremy opted for a nap while Jim and I whiled a few hours away laughing ourselves silly at my pathetic attempts to snowboard in my ski boot liners. I think I got one turn in. We cooked dinner, noted that the skies were clearing, boiled several hundred gallons of water, and took several photos of Adams and the sunset.
The next morning dawned clear and breezy. At 8am we started skinning towards the North Ridge. We switched to boots when the snow ran out, and the next several hours were spent scrambling around gendarmes, kicking steps up small snowfields, and then came a death slog to the summit ice cap. Due to an unfortunate turn of events back in Seattle, my food for the climb consisted of three packets of PowerGel. That fact, combined with my decided lack of physical fitness, made me slow on the last three thousand feet. Jim skinned up the summit and met up with long-suffering Jeremy (who had been waiting for two hours). Meanwhile, I felt like I was going to die, or at least, fall asleep, so I skipped the summit proper, and joined Jim and Jeremy on the traverse to the West Summit (Pinnacle?). At 2:30 pm we locked down heels and boots, and prepared for the descent.
The top was nasty, icy sastrugi, but the angle was low enough that I didn't have any difficulty. As the slope grew steeper, the snow became smoother and softer. I made several turns, did an unnecessary sideslip through the rockband, and stopped to wait for Jim. He made it through the rockband, lost an edge, and did a series of somersaults down the 45 degree slope, ending up 500 feet lower, 20 feet above the cliff. After some shenanigans I got his board, and with his axe in one hand and one of my skis in the other, he followed me 200 feet skier's right to the Adams Glacier, where the runout was smooth and the slope was mellow. Somewhat shaken, we made our way down to where Jeremy had skinned up with the rope. All is well that ends well, but damn, Jim, I'm glad you're OK.
We were happy to have survived as we straighlined our way back to the lake and down to camp. We packed up, and skied and hiked to the car.
In conclusion, the NFNWR is a fantastic ski. Just be careful. Please.
I apologize for the lack of action photos; I was too busy trying to keep up on the ascent and too busy skiing on the descent to take photos. Until next year when I go back, enjoy the photos of the NFNWR on Cascade Classics and Alpine Slider.
