[b00]

little tahoma 7/6 - 7/7/2010

little_tahoma_route.JPG

pics to come later. i was feeling anxiety for a couple of days before this climb. i really had no plans to climb little t because of all the rockfall issues. little did i know what was in store for us. but i did know that doing a trip with jb and dicey would be fun. the night before we left, i received a call from superwoman. she was eating at a mexican restaurant in enumclaw. she was tired, but wanted to give me all the beta for the trip. she had just taken a huge mountie party up there and said the climb would be very easy for us and gave us some pointers about where to camp and so forth. thanks superwoman! we left seattle bankers hours, 10am or so, knowing that getting to camp would be an easy trip. when we stopped at the white river ranger station to pick up the necessary $30 permits, the rangers informed us there were a ton of people on the route. they implied there could be more than 20! wow, midweek, we thought we would have it to ourselves. at frying pan creek trailhead, we walked the easy follow trail, eventually getting on easy snow, to the bridge with a railing over frying pan creek. from there we followed the footsteps in the snow to summerland. we ascended directly up toward meany crest staying climbers right of pt7573. on the way up, the ever vigilant dicey made a great discovery that was a boon to all of us, running water. we had assumed we would be melting snow. the water was running off of the rocks climbers right as we were ascending to meany crest. we camped at a most excellent camp(superwoman told us to camp there) on the plateau of 7573. super flat, fantastic huge rock walls, soft pumice ground, great views, this was the ritz of mountain camps. while i was getting water for us, i talked with two skiers, peter and brian, and told them about dicey's water. they had not noticed it. they asked if they could camp over near us. it was no problem since that plateau was huge. as it turned out there was not over 20 people on the route. there was just us three, the two skiers and pair of brothers that showed up a little later. for whatever reason, the brothers chose to camp on snow near the water. we started at 5:00am and had no route finding to do as there were footsteps leading us all the way to the top. we roped up, put on crampons and we walked the easy gentle fryingpan glacier to whitman crest, crossed the crest and followed the footsteps up the whitman. the whitman was only moderately steep, 30-35 deg up to a little bench. at the bench we untied from the rope, left the pickets(which we never used) and some extra water. we did on rising traverse on some steepening, maybe 40 deg, snow. it was very easy snow because it was perfect consistency, not too soft, not too hard. it was so easy, that on descent we just plunge stepped it. we followed the terrain and footsteps up mostly snow to within ~50 vertical feet of the summit. we walked up the easy loose rock to the notch. i crossed over the notch and scrambled the face to the summit. every single hold was crumbly, not one was positive. dicey thought this looked too scary and did not want to watch me. she got out the rope and jb led up the gully instead of the face and belayed dicey across. the summit was very cold because of wind. every place else was warm, so we descended after only a short stay on the summit. dicey and i put prusiks on the rope to protect on descent. jb rapped. we all did this carefully as the anchor was a detached block and definitely not something to stress. the rope got stuck. while we were messing with it, the two brothers arrived. jb or i were going to scramble up to get the rope, but we did not want to gum up the brothers climb so we asked them to throw it down to us once they ascended. they did. thanks guys. the descent to camp was easy and happy, like it always is when you summit and things go a lot easier than you thought they would. this probably was the best conditions you could do little tahoma in! hopefully dicey will add some details and pics. thank you guys for a great trip! equipment: ice axe, crampons, helmet, rope, harness, (pickets not used) stats: car to camp ~5hrs at casual pace camp to summit ~5hrs at casual pace edit 7/16/2010: i was asked: How long a rope did you use? We are thinking of bringing two 30 meter ropes, to divide the weight: would that be adequate (your route and dicey's route/rappel)? No pro as per your TR? we used a 50m rope which we shortened for glacier use by taking up coils on each end. if you wanted a rope for the summit block, i would guess (and i have hear) one 30m would suffice. we did not use any pro. they did use a couple of double runners for the belay anchor.

[twodogdad]

Thanks, b00! Happy trails, N

[Andy D.]

Thanks for kicking steps!

you guys heading down

Baker to Jefferson

[dicey]

I missed seeing this TR.... Thanks for the invite b00. I agree that this trip was a lot easier than I expected it to be. Lots of snow up high. Fun running into AndyD and his brother up there

snow covered trail below Summer Land

traversing to Meany crest

caption this photo!

marker on Meany Crest

oops!

morning light on Rainier

JB above the Whitman glacier

still going up

a steep bit

3 volcano view

last bit of snow before the rock

Blurry JB on the summit

blurry Brett on the summit

AndyD and bro on Little Tahoma

[b00]

[b00]

here are some pics from our climb(also proof positive that little t is taller than big t, mt rainer!):

little tahoma(on the left), as anyone can obviously see from this photo, is taller than mt rainier(center). anyone who thinks otherwise, obviously has never been here :>)

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pano-26.jpg

pano-5-meany_crest.jpg

pano-22-just_below_little_tahoma_summit.jpg

pano-24-summit_little_tahoma.jpg

[iron]