Mount Adams South Climb — Saturday, Jul. 30, 2016

South Cascades > Mount Adams Area

Mountaineers climb up Mazama Glacier of Mt. Adams. Road to our ideal TH on Yakima lands was closed. So we began at the main Cold Springs TH for the south spur route. I was last here in 2010, and wow it looked different after a huge forest fire swept through the area a few years back. Parking was actually not too bad compared to last time where I had to walk a mile up the road. We hiked up the trail to where it intersected the Around the Mountain Trail, then we hung a right and headed east into Yakima lands. After we crossed into the reservation land, we found ourselves hiking past many great meadows of flowers. Very pretty scenery. Soon we left the trail on a small path that quickly vanished, and hiked cross country up toward the glacier. We ascended into the glacial basin and traversed north under the glacier to the camp at the base of the glacier. It was a big flat area with several campsites with rock wind walls. And we had the place to ourselves, well, aside from a few goats. We woke up at 2am for a 3am start up the glacier. The stars and Milky Way were incredible and so clear and bright! We could see the city lights of Hood River to the south in front of Mt. Hood, and to the NE we saw the orange glow of the Yakima wildfires. We began up the glacier in the dark with our headlamps, heading straight up a pretty steep angle but staying right of the crevasses. Right when we reached the top of the glacier the sun peeked out over the horizon. We went over a ridge and entered the big snowfield of the south spur route. We could see all the other hikers heading up from all the tents below. We joined the crowds and made our way up this steep snowfield to the false summit, which was pretty windy. We continued on but my group got way ahead of me, as I was exhausted and slowing down. I kept pushing on and on and reached about 12k feet before my group was coming down from the summit and I turned back with them. Down, down, down we went down the glacier and back to our camp, then did the long and exhausting hike out to the TH. Check out my link below to see my photos.

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