[harrymalamute]

the original plan was to do an overnight at lunch counter and hopefully meet up with another nwhiker, but this climbs theme became adapt, improvise & overcome. to begin with my son (the tent carrier) bailed on me the day before the climb, ugg. that means a heavy load for little harry. start 12 midnite thursday 25, i barely get out the drive way and the fan belt is sqweeling, went home and tightened it in 5 min and reset the sails on the malamobile for mt adams, arrived at cold springs 7am and hit the trail 730am with cool temps. ben and i are feeling good when bam a mile up the trail my ebay koflach boot explodes and the entire right sole falls off so that im walking on my inner booty. dam i came too far to only get 1 mile up the trail, so i drop ben's & my pack and hobble back to the car and retrieve a roll of gorilla tape. buy the time we get started again its almost 11am and getting warmer. with the heavy packs and the do over i could tell the heat of the day would melt us so as we got into the snow of timberline the plan quickly changed to a day trip the next morning so i set up camp right next to the trail with a good view and shade for ben.

MT ADAMS 014

base camp near tree line

saturday 530am were off and wearing crampons from the start just to hold the boots together. once out of the tree's it's easy to pick up the trail with large cairns with poles sticking out. then you get to the first steep pitch of a 100yrds

MT ADAMS 021

which gets you on top of a ridge that leads towards lunch counter. halfway up the snow field to lunch counter i'm already having doubt's. my boot's weigh a million pounds and ben is starting to over heat with the temps nearing 80.

tuckered dog

change of plans again. i drop my pack at a rock pile and fill my jacket pockets with camera and a few food items and tie the sleeves around my waist and hook a h20 bottle to the rope around my waist connected to ben, grabbed my axe and headed up. i wanted to turn around a dozen times but kept going. first to lunch counter

below lunch counter

MT ADAMS 030

MT ADAMS 028

then to the base of the false summit slope

false summit slope of adams

which took 2.5 hours to get up. at the top of pikers i looked at the final summit slope

final summit slope behind benson

and my heart just sank. i didn't think we had it in us but to come this far with such blue bird weather i asked benson for every thing he had and he did. we arrived on the summit at 3pm for that million dollar feeling.

adams, summit

benson, king of the hill

everybody loves benson

mt rainier

mt hood

we stayed 20 min then started down. all day in the back of my mind i worried about ben coming down the steep slopes (i'd seen video of dogs sliding out of control) but we needed to glissade not so much for the fun but to save energy. off we go. i got him to tuck in right behind me in the glissade run so if he lost control he would bump into me and i could check our speed. he caught on pretty quick and we flew down the mountain making it back to camp in 3 hours-packed up and got to the car at 8pm for much needed h20. we both crashed hard till 430am sun then headed for home.

[the Zachster]

Way to go Benson!!! (and Benson's Dad, of course!) You guys had a lot of reasons to turn around but stuck it out. Congratulations on a great summit!

[bobbi]

congratulations to the team especially Benson! great summit photo!

[Magellan]

Way to tough it out during a lot of adversity. Great pix of you and the pooch. 9.5 hours up and 3 hours out, I love it!

[loper]

Glad to hear you made it! There were so many people up there I figured we just didn't see each other but sounds like we missed on your way down and my up to camp. I asked eveyone I saw with a dog what their dog's name was since I knew his name but not what you guys looked like. Was a good day in the mountains! L ps how does a dog glissade?

[BirdDog]

Nice TR, congrats on the summit to both of you! Great summit shot!

[coach]

What are the snow conditions like on Adams? I am taking a group up there in two weeks, not everyone has crampons/ice ax. I assume with all the foot traffic that there are already plenty of boot holes on the snow fields. Did you use crampons to get up Adams?

[Tom_Sjolseth]

Right on, Harry and Benson. Great TR.

[DIYSteve]

Great work, Benson!

[paultkuhn]

Good report Benson.

[Jim Dockery]

Cool climbin' dog, great work!

[twodogdad]

Congratulations, Malamute and M's best friend. A doggy question: Ben is made for this kind of environment, and I've seen photos of other dogs on Adams: how hard is the route right now for averagely-endowed pooches? Thanks, tdd

[DIYSteve]

We saw three dogs make the summit this weekend, including Geo's dog.

[harrymalamute]

big steve is right about snow conditions & equip. my thought is this is a big mountain and should be treated as such,weather is a huge factor and changes quickly. since this was a big deal for me and the dog and probably the limit of what i'd ask of him and because there's a lot of canine hikers on this site i'll expound a bit. my methods are based on bread,size,temperament,wt 118lbs. and my own personal experience. now ben is not nessisarly the best trail or climbing dog,he's a gentle giant and over heats quickly. on this day i saw several dogs that could run circles around ben. more mid sized and cooled more efficiently. most off them were off leash and did fine. but i'll list my reasons for keeping him attached always except for the glissades. 1)i consider it my sole responsibility to keep him safe & out of trouble, even though he's gentle and friendly he is very dominate and predatory,when that kicks in the brain shuts off to me.most malamute owners call this selective hearing. anyways i'm not going to enjoy myself if i'm yelling at him all day,plus on leash/rope he gives me a nice steady 5lb tug pulling me up hill (nice) and commands-gee,haw, whoa, gee over, haw over, easy, are given in quiet work like tones. 2) next roped on steep slopes will be controversial because they could take you down with them. i'm writing this only so you can make your own informed choice. i've seen ben on soft mushy snow start to slide backwards so on steep slopes i use 10' of climbing rope clipped to his chest harness, if he starts to slide i can lay down a self arrest with my axe and crampons,with a short rope he hopefully wont get to much momentum. that being said every route different so if it's not safe to tie into my dog then we shouldn't go & if i do make an error in judgement then i'm willing to go with him like yukon cornelious & the bumble. 3) going down hill you'll see dogs bounding with front legs out stretched and rear legs tucked up under them and on most slopes they are just fine but were talking about those slopes that are steep enough to loose control. on adams the glissade run outs were good with a formed trough so it wasn't hard for ben to stay right behind me and use my body as a stopper which he did. if the glissade wasn't safe then i would have down climbed slow and steady giving a steady flow of commands to go "slow" or "easy' or " whoa". i hope this info is helpful to anyone thinking about taking there best friend to the lofty places but please remember i'm not a pro. by any means and what works for me might not for you. i'll finish with a photo of the exploded boots

koflach boots exploded on mt adams, gorilla tape and old school strap type crampons kept them together long enough to get of the mountain.

cheers

[TMZ]

Great looking dog!