Holy of all swiss cows! This past weekend my german buddy Rainer convinced me to climb Mt. Adams. Good idea, we re both in shape, he's climbed it before, the weather was ok, we had a 3 day weekend (of which we only needed to spend 2 days, up and down quick)... so nothing really spoke agains it.
Drove down there in one go and were able to still climb up to about 300 meters from the termed "Lunch Counter", a flat-ish area at around 9'000 feet where people camp when the weather allows. Well we never even got there. Up around 8'000 feet it started storming (it already looked worse than predicted all day) and by the time we got close the wind was blowing icicles sideways onto our face such that we decided to camp for the night. We chose what we thought was a good protective area, a flat patch just besides a protective ridge.
Digging our campsite...
Drove down there in one go and were able to still climb up to about 300 meters from the termed "Lunch Counter", a flat-ish area at around 9'000 feet where people camp when the weather allows. Well we never even got there. Up around 8'000 feet it started storming (it already looked worse than predicted all day) and by the time we got close the wind was blowing icicles sideways onto our face such that we decided to camp for the night. We chose what we thought was a good protective area, a flat patch just besides a protective ridge.
Digging our campsite...
In the tent at night.. rainer likes his sleeping bag...
Took this at 3.am while shoveling snow off the tent..
On the way down....
Mistake. The wind picked up even more, right over the ridge, and carried more and more snow over it which started to cover up our tent. More and more. By now it was night and we could not sleep in a full blown strom on the mountain. We had to get out of the tent alternatively every 30 minutes and shovel the tent free.... that we did until late in the morning. No way getting off the mountain until it calmed down. Eventually the tent sort of collapsed and started ripping apart, and it was time to try to crawl down the mountain. Huge wind gusts, hail, not a fun outing. We made it down even though it was complete whiteout... a bit lucky since I met up with a rather big snow track that was half overblown. ..... at the end we were wet, cold, tired and had just had to leave the tent (rainer's 500$ expedition tent) behind. Tough luck, but we were happy to be back safe and a bit freaked out..
Volcano 1, Underprepared Foreginers 0
On the way going there....
Mistake. The wind picked up even more, right over the ridge, and carried more and more snow over it which started to cover up our tent. More and more. By now it was night and we could not sleep in a full blown strom on the mountain. We had to get out of the tent alternatively every 30 minutes and shovel the tent free.... that we did until late in the morning. No way getting off the mountain until it calmed down. Eventually the tent sort of collapsed and started ripping apart, and it was time to try to crawl down the mountain. Huge wind gusts, hail, not a fun outing. We made it down even though it was complete whiteout... a bit lucky since I met up with a rather big snow track that was half overblown. ..... at the end we were wet, cold, tired and had just had to leave the tent (rainer's 500$ expedition tent) behind. Tough luck, but we were happy to be back safe and a bit freaked out..
Volcano 1, Underprepared Foreginers 0
On the way going there....
Same place, on the way back....
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