15th July, Mount Rainier, Mowich Face

The Mowich face of Mt Rainier, with our line in red. Dubbed 'the most striking and beautiful line I've seen or skied in the continental US' by first descensionist Andrew McLean.

Booth and Colin Haley and myself skied the Edmunds Headwall on the Mowich face on July 15th. Since I moved to Seattle a couple winters ago and slowly became acquainted with the surrounding mountains, the Mowich face quickly burrowed itself into my conscience, its hanging glaciers, steepness and shear magnitude reminding me of certain parts of Les Alpes. The Edmunds Headwalls was first skied by none other than Andrew McLean and Carl Skoog, together with Doug Ingersol and Armand DuBuque in July 1997. As last spring unfolded, and suspicions grew that the high slopes of Rainiero were in decent nick, I wanted to make the most of a small window in between family visits and summer relocation. Seemed like the 14th - Bastille day- would be a possible descent date- a fitting homage to the nation that pioneered steep skiing and that is suffering from so much malaise sportive this summer hehe… In the end, we had to make do with Bastille plus un.

We left the Mowich lake trailhead on Wednesday 14th, late in the morning. The Haley bros don't deal in unnecessary crap, so they hid my DSLR as we were getting ready. And they were quite convincing too:

As soon as I saw the face, I was very excited- in the previous days I'd been reading Ryan Lurie's report of the route from just over a year earlier, and the top section of the face looked a lot whiter this year.

Onwards and upwards...

After a few hours hiking through beautiful alpine meadows we made it onto Ptarmigan ridge, and found a very nice little wind shelter around 8.5k. We enjoyed a lovely evening eating caviar, drinking champagne and discussing the various forms of showing one's full love to scrumpets. In this arena, Colin is surprisingly non-extreme.

Booth meditating at camp

The sun setting on Mother Mowich

We left the next morning around 5, and promptly made it to the Mowich glacier - the choss downclimb was minimal and we could ski most of the way down from the ridge. We traversed the glacier slowly gaining height until we were below the Edmunds Headwall. The rimaye crossing was uneventful (climbers left), and the climb thereafter progressed smoothly.

Colin on the way up

Myself, Eric Wehrly and Colin traversing above the upper schrund

As we were traversing above the upper schrund, in a cool and surreal moment, two local badboyz of skiing almost simultaneously appeared from the sunset ridge, Dan Helmstadter and Eric Wehrly- very cool to meet them! The five of us went on to Cap Liberté where it was bloody windy. We then skied some blower rainier summit pow pow to a cool wind shelter above the Mowich Face where we hanged out and waited for the Sun to shower Mowich in corn radiation. At 3.30pm we set out. We skied the upper face together, in beautiful snow conditions over immense exposure- truly memorable turns.

Steep skiing on the upper section of the Mowich

Dan and Eric then went their way towards Sunset ridge, while we headed down the Edmunds. The top schrund where it's a touch steeper and firmer was definitely focus time. The rest of the descent, where it mellows out considerably, was corn-fast-ish-turn paradise. We got lucky and timed it just right- soft enough at the top, not too soft at the bottom.

Booth in the middle section of the face

...Just Lovely...

The Mowich glacier ski was fun too, but getting a bit sticky towards Ptarmigan ridge. The climb back up the ridge wasn't much fun, but it could have been much worse… Got to camp, packed up, packed out, got packed by a cop in Wilkeston, and missed the Autobahn.

A perfect day :)