12,281 feet
Adams Glacier, Grade III, 45° snow and ice

    Gear Used:
  • ice axe
  • crampons
  • ice screws
July 21-22, 2009

The Approach

I have attempted to climb this route twice already! The first time was rained out and we didn't even make it a mile up the trail before we were completely soaked! Second time the car got stuck twice before we turned around and drove all the way home! Some of the difficulty of this climb is just getting to the trailhead. It can easily take over 4 hours just to get to the trailhead! That's assuming all the dirt roads are free of snow and haven't been wash out from winter storms!


Spencer and I thought we would give this climb another try (3rd times a charm!) in the middle of summer while we knew the roads were good. We woke up early expecting difficulties but had none. Weird, we might actually make it past the trailhead!

Once at the trailhead we quickly packed up to start the approach. The bugs were pretty bad at the start but as soon as we started hiking they seemed to disappear.

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The lower meadows with our route.

The heat was a bitch but once we started getting higher in the meadows a nice breeze kept us cool. The whole hike was beautiful! It seemed like we were hiking through meadows and flowers from the start!

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Spencer hiking to the upper meadows.

I have never been this far on the trail so it was great to see all this amazing scenery! We eventually made it to an area called "high camp" on the map but it was not close enough to the mountain for us so we kept on hiking.

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Reaching the snow above "high camp".

We set up a high camp near a beautiful glacier tarn with the Adams Glacier right in front of us. It only took us two in a half hours to get to high camp so we had hours to do absolutely nothing!

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Mt. Adams from our high camp.

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Evening light on the mountain.

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Mt. Rainier sunset.

The Climb

We set the alarm for 1am to start our climb. We were hiking up the mellow glacier by 1:30. We could see a team of 7 that were already on the route. We thought that they would not interfere with our progress as we thought we were hours behind them.

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Spencer in the early morning at about 9,000 feet.

We ended up catching up with the party of 7 way to quickly as they were hardly moving! At one point we thought they turned around but sure enough they were still trudging on.

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Higher on the Adams Glacier.

We hit the crux of the route around 10,000 feet. It was not as difficult as we thought. I only placed one ice screw near a sketchy crevasse but that was it.

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Reaching the gentle slopes near the summit plateau.

We cruised up the crux and eventually passed the other party. By the time we made it to the summit slopes we were both exhausted! The snow bridges were a bit sketchy on the upper slopes as I punched through two of them! Once we made it to the summit plateau it was a long but mellow stroll to the summit.

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Spencer on the summit.

We spent little time up on top as we wanted to get the North Ridge descent done with. The ridge was easy to find and starts off really mellow. Eventually it just became a horrible mess of loose rock, scree and boulders! I have a hard time imagining this as a good climbing route because it is a horrible descent route! It took us about two in a half hours to get down this disgusting crap pile and by the time we made it back to camp my boots were full of rock and dirt.

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Descending the horrible North Ridge.

We didn't relax much at camp, just packed up and headed down. The hike out was kind of a pain as we were tired and dehydrated. It seemed like a long hike out but we eventually made it back to the car.

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View of the mountain on our hike out.

This ended up being a great trip and I finally made to the summit of Mt. Adams for the first time!

-Useful guide books-