Carbon Glacier (Mt. Rainier)This report was sent in my a friend of mine, Jesse, who hiked to the Carbon Glacier on the north side of Mt. Rainier. I think this story further emphasizes the importance of staying calm and utilizing mountain skills. The attached map shows our route. The route in red is the trip in. The route in yellow is the first attempt back out, and the black route is the eventual route that we took to get back to the car. This is the actual map that Carl and I used on the trip, minus the marked trails. I printed out the map and laminated prior to leaving, and it was invaluable. We left Kent at around 5:30am, and drove through Wilkenson and Carbonado and parked across the bridge over the Carbon River. We walked out onto the bridge and looked over at the river below. My brother-in-law had bungee jumped off the bridge some time back. We proceeded onto the Carbon River Ranger Station and parked again, making our last minute restroom stop. The facilities here are quite nice. Driving through the park, we went on through to the end of the row and parked at the Ipsut Creek Trailhead. After putting on our boots, gaiters, fiddling with our packs, we actually hit the trail at 7:07am. Leaving the trailhead at 7:07am, we made our way across the suspension bridge at 8:30. This was 3.1 miles from the trailhead. The route marker said that it was another 0.4 miles to the Carbon Glacier vista, right about at the mouth of the Glacier. The trail gets steeper at this point, and has a huge rock wall along the left hand side of the trail, known as the Northern Crags. My recollection of the trail from several years back was that there was a series of switchbacks that went up and somehow away from the glacier and eventually into Mystic Lake. A closer look of the map reveals that the trail winds away only briefly but then gets up on the Moraine ridge that becomes part of the Wonderland Trail and runs parallel on that ridge to the glacier. We didn't want to get up on the ridge and move away from the glacier, but rather climb down to the glacier run off, up the steep scree slope onto the glacier itself. This meant going off trail, bushwhacking through slide alder, and washed out trails covered with mud and debris, and eventually moving down to the mouth of the glacier stream. We then boulder hoped across the stream several times to get a chance to move up onto the glacier itself. After several attempts, we final made it, near the confluence of Deer Creek and the Carbon itself. I will tell you that it is no small feet to ford a glacier confluence of two rivers on large wet boulders with boots and a pack on. Thank God we didn't slip into the raging current! After crossing the river, we looked for a way up the scree slope onto the snow. The scree or mud/rocks/boulder debris that the glacier pushes downstream and up the sides of the glacier form steep loose slopes that easily shift and change when you try and climb them. This is why the National Park service has dire warning about staying away from the glacier mouth. The hazard of rock fall is quite severe. Several times as we approached the "cornice" of the scree slope, the boulders would abruptly shift and fall down towards us. Once a boulder the size of an office chair just two feet in front of me suddenly shifted and dropped one foot down, and just missed crushing my boot! Carefully and gingerly we got on top of the scree ridge, and then descended the other side onto the snow covered ice of the glacier itself. It was now 10:00am. The next hour was pristine hiking up the glacier. We really felt like we were in a snow field, similar to the Muir snow field and elected not to rope up. At 11:00am, we took a break for lunch and rested at some rock formations poking through at 4400 feet. We were visited by what appeared to be a monster sized raven, perhaps an omen of what was to come. It must have stood 20 inches high. At this point we figured that we should rope up and we proceeded to put on our harness, stow our ski poles and use our ice axes. The weather was comfortable, with a lot of cloud cover for which we were grateful. The sun off the glacier floor can be intense. As soon as we set out, within two or three minutes, we found ourselves in the middle of a severely crevassed field. This was good practice to weave our way through, finding the appropriate snow bridges to cross. We proceeded up through the Carbon Glacier, often referring to the map we had in hand. This was something that we did right, that is make note of the terrain, checking it against the map. After the 5000 foot level, the weather starting doing some gymnastics. We would alternate between wind, sun, clearing and snow, with all at the same time occurring intermittently. It was actually quite pleasant to climb with the sun out, light wind, and have popcorn snow falling all about. We did sunblock. After passing Goat Island Rock, and consulting our memories and map, we discussed looking for an alternate path down by traversing the glacier and attempting to find the Wonderland Trail up on the Moraine Ridge. Our hope was to find an easy descent and avoid the washed out trail, scree slopes and boulder hopping and river crossings. We picked out some landmarks near Goat Island Rock and figured on using them on our descent to find the Wunderland Creek and pack trail. We continued to climb steadily up the Carbon Glacier. By 1:45pm we were near or at 7000 feet, and the sun came out strong, all the clouds disappeared, and we had an unobstructed view of Mt. Rainier in front of us. We were passed the large ice falls that are just before the Willis Wall. Willis Wall, and Liberty Ridge were directly in front of us, and we could see Thumb Rock quite clearly. Curtis Ridge was clear to our left, and Ptarmigan Ridge to our right. There were some very eerie echoes off the rock formations on our right, separating the Russell and Carbon glaciers. We first thought we were hearing another climbing party. After some time, we realized it was our own voices echoing back! We took the time to get some pictures of each other, and even set up a timer shot of us together, balancing the camera on two ice axes. It was 2:00pm and we figured to climb a little further, perhaps all the way to Willis Wall. Our drop dead turn around time was 4:00pm. |
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