[dixon]

Saw lots of chaos on Rainier this past weekend and the Rangers put out a blog post highlighting one of the issues - folks not roping up on glaciers. Recently there's also been an uptick in the number of climbers travelling un-roped, including climbers ascending the Emmons glacier to Camp Schurman, coming off rope as they descend the corridor, and even travelling off rope for their entire ascent of the upper mountain. This is extremely ill-advised. Significant hazards are always present in these areas, and with warmer temperatures the odds of punching through into an unseen crevasse are even higher. http://mountrainierclimbing.blogspot.com/2022/07/big-ups-for-staying-roped-up.html

[DadFly]

If it ain't bison its crevasses. At least no one has tried to take their pet buffalo up the Emmons unroped.

[Cyclopath]

I tamed a buffalo and rode it up Mount Adams and Baker, but it was afraid of running into Bigfoot on the Eminems Glacier so we didn't get Rainier.

[Schroder]

[rubywrangler]

The route crosses over from Inter glacier to the emmons at Camp Curtis

[Schroder]

[DadFly]

I have done it both ways. The Emmons route is easier unless the moat is huge. We always roped up.

[Randito]

I think the big thing the rangers are concerned about is people traveling unroped on foot above Camp Shurman. PNW Tradition for skiers is to travel uphill roped, but descend unroped with two skiers carrying two separate ropes in their packs and not skiing too close to each other. But walking on foot on the Emmons is a different set of risks. There are some big ass crevasses on the Emmons and an unroped fall could be very bad. The Interglacier is different, it's is mostly static and fairly shallow, so the odds of falling more than 30 down in a big ass crevasse are significantly less.

[Celticclimber]

We were just at Sunrise Tues-Thursday (12th -15). From where I stood; it looked like the Inter Gl is a very steep up. In which case: I wouldn't rope up either. Sometimes a rope is more of a suicide pact, than a life saver. But as per the article. The Emmons is somewhere one should rope up.

[domaz]

[HikingBex]

I went up the Easton route on Baker today and saw a number of interesting scenarios: -a team roped up on the way up, when the whole route was in shade & quite frozen, and then descended unroped when the route was quickly warming up in the sun -a solo climber who stopped to take an extended (>30 min) rest sitting at the lip of a crevasse -2 other parties headed up in the heat of mid-day unroped (and seemingly without a rope) Of note, it wasn't that busy of a day on Easton, so these folks made up a relatively large portion of people out today I'm relatively new to glacier travel & do try to understand how people make the decisions they do in the alpine but these were all head scratchers for me.

[Randito]

The Easton is even more fun in the winter, when snowmobiles raz all over it's surface. Technically they aren't supposed to venture past Sherman Peak (10,000 ft elevation) but sled frequently get "lost" and wander up to Grant peak in their confusion. Occasionally a sled breaks through a snowbridge into a crevasse, the forest service will levy hefty fines if the sled is not recovered , which usually involves a powerful helicopter. As far as I know no "lost" sleds have fallen into a crevasse within the wilderness boundary. https://www.airmedandrescue.com/latest/news/us-navy-team-rescues-hiker-snowmobilers https://cascadeclimbers.com/forum/topic/23214-snowmobile-in-a-crevasse-on-baker/ https://r.tapatalk.com/shareLink/topic?url=https://www.snowest.com/forum/threads/mt-baker-info.367250/&share_tid=367250&share_fid=657&share_type=t&link_source=app

[Riverside Laker]

[Malachai Constant]

Back in the day (early 70’s) we had crevasse rescue practice on Interglacier, the cracks were at least a full rope length.

[gb]

I have experience with a near crevasse-fall on skis on Glacier Peak, Kennedy Glacier in early April, 1992. We had a rope in a pack and were ascending on skis when I turned sideways for a picture near 9000'. I broke a two foot bridge but spread eagled to stop myself. Below the two foot bridge was a five foot wide crevasse. I got the rope out of my pack and Carl drove his skis into the snow and braced and pulled me to safety. As I extricated, I looked into the crevasse hole and saw it was something like 100-200' deep. After that event, when I thought I was safe because of the time of year, I backed off on skiing glaciers. The upper Kennedy is very active and that spring, 1992 was quite dry (the driest until maybe 2015). My take is that the rate of glacial movement was greater than the rate at which snowfall was building bridges. I think the shape of a glacier (as well as it's activity) has a lot to do with the security on skis or foot. Convex areas of a glacier and increases in slope angle have the potential for rapidly expanding crevasses and thin bridges. Much of the Easton is an example of this. Concave areas of a glacier and lower angled areas can have very deep crevasses, but the cracks are often incipient. Centers of glaciers like the Coleman are examples of this. I still skied glaciers like the Interglacier and Whitman Glacier subsequently, but my boldness on more active glaciers has been much more cautious since that event.