Ridge Explorations

After the view of Rainier from Granite Mountain, we decided to get a bit closer. We drove to meet Ciel's friend Don in Greenwater, who directs an outdoor company that specializes in avalanche training, http://www.ridgeexplorations.com/

Don brought ice axes for all of us, as he knew there were some icy stretches on the north facing slopes we wanted to traverse. Most of the others we saw didn't have ice axes or even ski poles, and were taking a bit of a risk of a nasty fall (the sign at the visitor center said 4 people had fallen in the past month). One woman had an old ice axe about 5 feet long - it looked like the axes from Conraid Kain's days!

Ciel got a shot of the herd of killer mountain goats who were practicing trundling rocks down on unsuspecting hikers - but then they almost stampeded over her when the helicopter flying buckets of climber poop down from Schurman Camp got too close.

The tracks up to the summit from Schurman Camp were easily visible, but we couldn't see any climbers up on the hill. Oh well, they should have been down by that time of day anyway.

The best part of the day was eating ice cream cones back in Greenwater at Wapati Woolies. (I got Huckleberry, ciel got Moose Tracks, which apparently is a vanilla/chocolate thing).

-mark.