My first Adams summit and 4th WA volcano! We also summited my climbing partners dog (Tater Tot for anyone who we met along the way!). We had perfect weather conditions and hardly any wind.
The road in is rough but if you take it slow it's fine. A Jetta was coming down behind me as I left. There's these weird drainage humps that are massive, but I didn't bottom out in my Forester.
We started for Lunch Counter around noon and took it slowly, getting to camp around 6pm. Morrison Creek down low is flowing strong. At LC, if you pick one of the higher sites near the end of the glissade, there's running water in the boulders.
After a beautiful smokey night from the fire in Hood River, we took off around 6am for the summit.
Pikers Peak is rough, there's no easy way to put it. It's steep and the snow is a very skinny patch near the top, making you have to just go straight up. Mentally prepare that it's not the top. It took us 2.5 hours to here.
The best route we found to the summit was to go across the snowfield and up, following the glissade chute from the summit. Some people were going to the right, it sounded like that was the better option if you were up there earlier. We got to the summit around 9:45am. It was windy on the knob, but just below it was calm.
Going down took us around 45 min with glissading. I was a little nervous for the one coming down Piker’s, but I'm so glad I did it instead of trying to walk down!
There is a fantastic glissade coming down from lunch counter at the end of the snowfield. Probably my favorite one, it is very deep and reminded me of a water slide!
Overall and excellent climb!
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