Mt Adams 9-16-21
Posted: September 17th, 2021, 6:24 pm
I hiked Mt Adams using the usual south summit route. For a walk-up summit, it was pretty challenging. This was partly due to the snow-free conditions on the mountain making for slow going on the way up and an annoyingly slippery decent. I don't know if I'd jump at the chance to do this again without a decent snow pack.
I drove to the trailhead from Seattle the night prior, arriving at about 1:30am. Slept in the back of my Jeep until waking up around 5ish and having breakfast and coffee. It was a cold night, easily reaching freezing temperatures at the trailhead. It was also very quite, with only handful of other cars parked in the lot. Amazingly, I saw 5 people all day on the mountain and had the summit entirely to myself for a little while. My overall time on the mountain was almost exactly 12 hours, of which 7.25 were spent on accent. I started the day a bit tired and slow and then definitely felt the altitude above 11k feet, which caused me to really drag.
Just below the lunch counter I made a route finding mistake on the decent that could have caused me trouble, but I was thankfully able to consult GPS to see that I'd deviated well west of the normal route. Not sure how I pulled off, but it was a bit sketchy and I ended up somewhat cliffed out. Ultimately, I had to backtrack a bit which caused added maybe an extra mile and 150 additional feet of gain on to the hike. Of course that doesn't sound like too much, but after an already tough slog up it was a bit frustrating.
With the weather coming in this weekend I expect conditions will rapidly shift on the mountain, but as of 9/16 there was only one unavoidable patch of ice in the saddle between Piker's and the true summit. I used crampons here and appreciated them. I had an ice axe and used it mostly to assist navigating the endless loose scree and sand on the way down.
I drove to the trailhead from Seattle the night prior, arriving at about 1:30am. Slept in the back of my Jeep until waking up around 5ish and having breakfast and coffee. It was a cold night, easily reaching freezing temperatures at the trailhead. It was also very quite, with only handful of other cars parked in the lot. Amazingly, I saw 5 people all day on the mountain and had the summit entirely to myself for a little while. My overall time on the mountain was almost exactly 12 hours, of which 7.25 were spent on accent. I started the day a bit tired and slow and then definitely felt the altitude above 11k feet, which caused me to really drag.
Just below the lunch counter I made a route finding mistake on the decent that could have caused me trouble, but I was thankfully able to consult GPS to see that I'd deviated well west of the normal route. Not sure how I pulled off, but it was a bit sketchy and I ended up somewhat cliffed out. Ultimately, I had to backtrack a bit which caused added maybe an extra mile and 150 additional feet of gain on to the hike. Of course that doesn't sound like too much, but after an already tough slog up it was a bit frustrating.
With the weather coming in this weekend I expect conditions will rapidly shift on the mountain, but as of 9/16 there was only one unavoidable patch of ice in the saddle between Piker's and the true summit. I used crampons here and appreciated them. I had an ice axe and used it mostly to assist navigating the endless loose scree and sand on the way down.