It was Day 3 of our Volcano skiing blitz, and you could say the crew was getting a bit lazy and tired. We were keeping a pretty good stoke for a group that hadn't really slept in 3 days, and after an easy day up Mt Hood the day before, we figured we had Mt Adams in the bag - another gimme? 

Guess those who had already skied the peak in past years forgot to mention that this sucker wasn't a gimme.

After a late arrival and another pathetically short sleep, we rolled out of bed at the Cold Springs camping area at about 4:30am, lazily packed our gear, ate some undecooked instant oatmeal (is that possible) and then set out on the trail.

Rumour had it the snow a kilometer from the trailhead, but um, maybe they meant a vertical kilometer? Lets just say there was plenty of hiking ahead of us, so much that most of us got in the groove and forgot to put our skis on, ever! 

By lunchtime at the lunch plateau, half of us were still walking up the rocks and mostly frozen snow, while the other half slid their way up with touring boots and skins. Our main motivation for walking?... Doing anything we could to avoid putting our feet into new touring boots again!

Hours later, Cheddar was topping out just below the peak before mid day, still in his hiking shoes! The rest of us were scattered across the slope or shale slope to climbers left, slogging our way up the waaaay-longer-than-we'd-hoped glacier towards the summit. But sun stroke and some more slogging later, all 8 of us had bagged peak #3 of the roadtrip, and were chillin' at 12,726 feet atop Mt Adams, eyeing up St Helens in 1 direction and our next stop, Mt Rainier, in the other.

But enough about the up, the down was definitely where it was at on Adams. 10 feet in, I finally clued in that I had forgotten to set the DIN on my new G3 Onyx AT bindings... that I'd skied the last 2 peaks in! Guess that's one check mark for boot retention for G3.

After that douche-bag manouever, we headed for the SW Chutes - definitely one of the coolest lines down the mountain. 4000 feet of 35-40 corn shredding down a finger chute, just the way we like it! It just kept going, and going, and going.

And then when the skiing finally stopped, our day kept going and going. Yep, skiing the SW Chutes in mid summer apparently ends in a couple kilometers of shale scrambling to regain the access trail. Was that ever a kick in the nuts at the end of a long day. But we got'er done without incident, OK maybe a few rock-alanches for good measure. And everyone got back in one piece, one peak richer.

What was the overall vibe on the day? Well, check the video and see for yourself.

Next Stop... Mt Rainier.

Mt Adams Route Information and Resources

• Mt Adams Route Information
• US Forest Service for Mt Adams
• Mt Adams on Bivouac.com