Departed from Fort Lewis, WA around 11:00am. Made it to the Cold Springs campground at around 4:30pm. The gravel road to Cold Springs isn't the best. Be prepared for lots of bumps and holes.

There were quite a few people there and it looked liked most of them were camping and would start on Saturday morning. We wanted to beat the crowd so we left Cold Springs at 5:00 pm on Friday afternoon. The trail is extremely easy to follow all the way to Lunch Counter.

The first mile is just a wide dirt trail that has a continuous incline. The second mile has some snow along with a lot of shale rock. After this it's pretty much snow with some intermittent rock formations. Some people walked on the snow and some chose the rocks. Neither of us used crampons and we didn't see anyone else using them for this part of the climb.

We reach Lunch Counter at 7:45 pm. There were plenty of open spots. We were at 8,500 ft. There were some spots above and below us. Recommend going as high as you can so you can have less of climb in the morning. Of note, I wore shorts and a t-shirt this whole time and felt fine. The weather was about 75 degrees. Due to this I burned through almost all of my 4 qts of water. Luckily my friend had his stove and we melted snow to replenish both of our water supplies. We were both prepared for some strong winds and low temps but it never happened. It dipped down to 45 but inside the tent and sleeping bags we were fine.

We woke up at 5:00 am and took our time getting ready. While we were eating and prepping there were a few groups who walked by, maybe 15 people total. We left out tent and gear that we wouldn't be needing behind. Both of us had put on crampons at this point and started the trek to the summit. The climb is steep but not technical. I used my treking poles the whole way until the last 500ft. I probably could have kept using them all the way to the summit but I wanted to try the ice axe out since I'd been carrying it the whole time. The trail from Lunch Counter to the summit is very established. You'll have no issues knowing which way to go.
For this part of the climb I wore a t-shirt with a light-weight top. For bottoms I had a light layer one bottom with a pair of shorts over them. I would've been fine with just shorts.

We reached the summit at 10:00 am. The weather was awesome and there was almost no wind at all. There were maybe 15 other people up top at the time. The summit is big so don't worry about being crowded up there. We ate a small snack and drank some water and took some summit photos. Great views of all the surrounding mountains. We started the glisade down at 10:30 am. I'm not sure if reaching the summit or the glisade down was the better part.

I highly recommend a light shell pair of pants so you can get some good sliding. The glisade tubes were almost like waterslide tubes. They were well established and were an absolute blast to slide down. I used my ice axe to slow me down when I picked up too much speed. We made it back to our camp at 11:45 am. So what took us 4 hours to climb up took an a little over and hour to slide back down.

We broken camp and headed back down to Cold Springs at 12:00 pm. There were a lot of people coming up. We reach Cold Springs at 2:30 pm.

Picked up a permit at the Ranger Station in Trout Lake just after 4pm. The road to the Cold Water trailhead was drivable with a low-clearance car, but required some care: The first part was paved, but narrow; the second part was wide, but badly washboarded; the final part was narrow and rutted. Cars were parked all over the place near the trailhead, but I managed to find a spot.

The first, large patches of snow started a mile or so in. The dusty and rocky trail that climbs along the ridge was dry; some people chose to ascend next to the ridge on snow. At the end of the ridge trail, I headed straight up on snow until reaching the Lunch Counter area.

Given the number of people I had seen on the trail, I was worried about finding a good camping spot. But only a fraction of the established, walled-in sites were occupied. Got the tent set up just as it started getting dark. Didn't find any of the water sources, so I ended up melting some snow. Once the sun was gone, the temperature dropped and there was a constant wind throughout the night.

The next morning, I started climbing around 6:30, just as the sun came up, along with several other parties. The snow was hard, but not icy, and there were plenty of steps. Surprisingly, there was only one group on the summit. Snow started getting soft when I started descending around 9am. Made use of some very nice glissade tracks; just skipped one section were the tracks had become 6ft deep.

Packed up the tent and headed down. By 10am there appeared to be an uninterrupted line of climbers heading up. On the way down, I missed the spot where I had climbed up to the ridge, but found a less steep spot to descend.

Photos: http://picasaweb.google.com/eric.jain/MountAdamsAugust2012
Panorama: http://photosynth.net/view.[…]da05-49d9-ad68-7f131fd1f347
Tracklog: http://connect.garmin.com/activity/206705661

Did this climb last year, but I thought you might want to be aware of one little problem. If you are planning to stay overnight at Lunch Counter, try to keep any electronic gear and food away from the ground. The very fine sand at the campsites gets into everything. My camera jammed when sand particles got into the case and any opened package of food had sand in it. Very annoying.

Ever since doing the Mt Adams South Climb 3 years ago and glissading from Piker's Peak I had been wanting to do this with the whole family. This weekend we got our chance, with good weather and snow on most of the route, and it did not disappoint. The ranger told us there were over 400 people climbing on Saturday. It looked like a large fraction were skiers. We were amazed by a large group of joggers who zoomed past us wearing shorts and tennis shoes with no crampons, and by a couple of dogs—one who summited.
The glissade is icy and a bit rough at the top. We timed it so we were able to climb frozen snow wearing crampons and start the glissade down around noon which was about right—any earlier would have been too icy and much later would have meant climbing in soft snow.