It didn't start out as the LAST stop of our volcano skiing tour, but it sure as hell ended that way. Climbing and skiing 14,411 ft Mt Rainier one and a half times in a day was all we needed to squash our quads and satiate any further desire for climbing or skiing. Wait, 1.5 times? Well, pretty much.

Things started to go south before we even got to the mountain. Rumours that Fuhrer's Finger - the only route we really wanted to ski - was burnt out and full of rocks and lameness, and maybe didn't even go through. But after hours of debate over some gut-wrenching pizza (more on that to come), we stuck with plan A and headed to the Paradise base area for a quick night's sleep and to see the Finger for ourselves.

Sure enough, we awoke to a clear view of a brown and sun chute that likely wasn't even freezing over night, and reports from a climber next to us that it's west deep post-holing through the gut of the chute. More doom and gloom. So we took a souvenir photo, sulked for a while, then drove around the entire mountain to the White River base area instead, to join the masses on the most popular mountaineering route on Rainier - the Emmons Glacier. It wasn't until after the trip, when we downloaded our photos, that we saw this... recent tracks in the Fuhrer's Finger! Yaw, so ummm, awkward.

But the Emmons didn't disappoint. Well, it was off to a rough start, but had it's fair share of adventure to keep us awake. With visions of sunstroke and bleeding/throbbing toes, Cheddar and Chad M respectively threw in the towels and opted for some lake action instead of the epic that we had coming for us. Meanwhile Tobin's pizza came back to haunt him, literally, and violently. Mmmmm, cue the mental picture.

With temps in the mid 30's Celsius, we opted to lounge in the shade until late afternoon, then hike our overnight gear only as far as the very bottom of the Inter Glacier, only about 2500 ft from where we started, and still about 2500ft below Camp Schurman where most people base from. No need to get into those new touring boots any sooner than you have to, right?

We hauled our butts out of bed at about midnight, and watched Chad "I'm-Waking-Up-Earlier-Than-You-Guys" Sayers toe-pointing his way up the Inter Glacier. The rest of ous soon followed on skins, and wouldn't know until later that Chad actually hadn't brought his skins at all.

After hours of solo skinning and some rocky traversing in the dark, we ended up above Camp Schurman before sunrise, and finally started to resemble what they sometimes call a 'group'... for a while anyway. Rope teams were formed, and 6000 ft of skinning ensued (or bootpacking for some). We all made it to the top at one point or another, then 're-grouped' to start our descent, on a whim... of a line that only Andre and I had noticed on the way up (Winthrop Glacier to Camp Schurman). Insert TSN Turning Point here! All we could promise is that a) it physically 'goes through' and that b) we'd probably find the exit.

After 2200 ft of awesome wind buff and then slush skiing, our promise came true, but not how we'd hoped. It indeed 'went through', but with foot deep isothermic schmooo, a dozen obvious crevasses to cross, a football field of fairly new serac fall debris, and an uncertain group with 6 differing opinions, we were pretty much up the creek without a paddle. But in a creek you could just drift down. We on the other hand decided to go up. Waaaay up. All the way to where our tracks left the main goat path at over 13000 ft, much to the amusement of the dozens of campers at Schurman who'd watched the whole spectacle unfold. And of course... Chad was still bootpacking!

Our already optimistic 8,000ft day was now over 10,000 ft, we were mostly out of water and food, dazed from the sun, and Kellie was enjoying the 'high life' of altitude wooziness. Just to top it off, the ski line was already re-freezing, yielding about 6000 feet of tooth-rattling shredding to Camp Schurman, and 2000 ft of elephant snot back to camp.

And just as we dreaded the last 2 hr walk back to the car, Andre's iPhone came through for us. Cheddar and Chad M had watched the whole junkshow from a tourist telescope at Sunrise Visitor Center, and texted to say they were on their way up to camp with fuel, food and water. Boooyaaaaah. Talk about progressing the sport. While MSP is busy taking the park in the backcountry, Dre is bringing the office even further.

Back at White River the next morning, the head count of sunstroked and sore-toed skiers was now at 8, so we hit the I-5 and lake-hopped our way back to Vancouver for some late-night all-you-can-eat Sushi. Chad was blind from leaving his contacts in too long, we all had our skiing fix for atleast 2 months. Shasta, Hood, Adams, and Rainier in 6 days. Baker and the others will still be there next year, unless they pull a St Helens on us. Until then...

Mt Rainier Ski & Weather Resources

• Mt Rainier National Park
• Mt Rainier Weather Forecast
• Mt Rainier Ranger's Blog & Trip Reports
• Mt Rainier Ski Route Descriptions
• Good Local Trip Reports