Hiking

Delayed Summer and Winter Dangers on Mount Rainier

/ Andrew Szalay / Leave a comment

It’s been a strange season. Earthquakes normal on the western portion of North America has now hit the east coast; though it hardly qualifies as a “big one” to westerners. And in the western mountains, summer arrived late.

On Mount Rainier, summer is normally welcomed with a great deal of unofficial pomp and circumstance. With May/June coming around, the flowers start to bloom in the alpine meadows, unusual signs of life on the snow (yes, the snow) show up, and throngs of automobiles bringing tourists, hikers and climbers pass through Paradise, Longmire and Sunrise.

Interestingly, in 2011, winter and spring lingered much longer than usual… well into summer. Unusually high amounts of snowfall throughout the mountain ranges of the west coast of the US. In fact, the mountain meadows, like in Paradise Valley, have come alive at last. The alpine wildflowers are blooming now in late August – a phenomena that normally occurs months earlier.

Several hiking trails throughout the park were inaccessible and closed to “normal” summer hiking. Snowshoes or skis, ice axes and snow shovels were necessary tools to carry even in July.

But for those that were there in the wintry summer may have seen the mountain in an altogether different light and understood how harsh and exciting a winter environment the mountain can be in other parts of the year. More people were able to see the watermelon snow – an algae that grows on the snow at higher altitudes around Mount Rainier National Park that looks red as if a watermelon’s juices dripped all over.

But with all of these lingering winter conditions are the dangers that make winter and spring exciting and dangerous (both of which are mutual, in my book.) The watermelon snow could be harmful to your system, so be sure to use snow for drinking water elsewhere. Be sure to be prepared for backcountry winter travel and the dangers of avalanches. Winter traction and stability tools are also essential.

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Sources: 1) Yuasa, Mark, “Wildflowers Finally Visible on the Hillsides of Mount Rainier National Park,” Seattle Post Intelligencer, August 21, 2011; 2) Schmoe, Floyd, A Year in Paradise, Mountaineers, 1999.

Lessons from the Yosemite Waterfall Tragedy

/ Andrew Szalay / 1 Comment

There was a tragedy at Vernal Fall in Yosemite National Park last month that you may or may not have heard about. It was given a decent amount of media coverage because there were a fair number of witnesses.  Plus, there have been 17 deaths at this falls since the park began maintaining records.

On July 19, 2011, three hikers at the top of Vernal Fall on the man-made observation deck hopped over the fence and approached the water, made higher and more forceful because of the winter snows still melting from heavier-than-normal amount. During an attempt to take a photo beyond what the park officials deem as safe, they were swept away and over the falls. There were no survivors.

The author of Snowstruck: In the Grip of Avalanches, Jill Fredston, has some fantastic observations about human behavior in nature. She applies it to snow covered mountains primarily but much of it applies elsewhere in wilderness as well. What I want to draw on from her work is the notion that aside from the natural terrain’s condition, our experience, confidence and comfort in the backcountry – or on its fringe – can actually increase our exposure to risk!

Comfort and confidence is an allusion. Fredston statistically demonstrates that most avalanche accidents happen on slopes the victim is familiar with, just as most car accidents happen within only a few miles from home. Where we are comfortable and let down our guard the chances of dangerous incidents occurring rise. Why else do many climbers gash their leg open on “easy” terrain?

This waterfall was primed for power this summer. The Sierra Nevadas received more snowfall and it is still draining down. Vernal Fall is relatively accessible and includes a viewing platform. Perhaps the victims felt their experience in the backcountry said to them, if we were off trail and deep in Kings Canyon, we would just walk up to the water; the platform is just for convenience and for the less initiated.

Similar thoughts guided my buddy and me to hop the fence at Exit Glacier on the Kenai Peninsula in Alaska. In retrospect, this could have gone horribly wrong. Exit Glacier is the most accessible glacier in Alaska. Within a ten-minute or so walk from the car you can take in the blue-refracting ice and glacial silt.

Where a warning sign says it’s dangerous and risk of life and so forth, we jumped the fence, took a photo with the sign and sprinted across the wet-ash-like silt for the glacier. The photos turned out great and we came home unscathed. We could have been pummeled by a ton or more of ice fracturing off.

That’s the other aspect of risk in the backcountry. As Fredston points out in a more articulate way than this: We are likely to do stupid things with our friends. We often defer to the most confident and say to ourselves, it’s not that bad. We ought to listen to our own judgment and risk-o-meter more.

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Sources: 1) Wozniacka, Gosia, “Yosemite deaths a reminder of rivers’ risks,” Seattle Post Intelligencer, 24 July 2011; 2) “Vernal Fall deaths over the years,” Merced-Sun Star, 21 July 2011; and 3) Fredston, Jill, Snowstruck: In the Grip of Avalanches, Harcourt 2005.

Yes, I Said Full Grain Leather Boots: Asolo TPS 520

/ Andrew Szalay / Leave a comment


Allow me to present the TPS 520 boots from Asolo. They are classics.

Regrettably, some people today don’t generally embrace a certain quality about these boots: They are made of full grain leather. Quite a few hikers have abandoned leather altogether in favor of mesh, vinyl and plastic molding for support and comfort. Those new-style boots get good ratings in the gear guides. You might even own a pair and love them, but here are some reasons to not dismiss these classics.

For background, these Asolos have carried me through hundreds and hundreds of miles in the Adirondacks, New Hampshire’s Whites and Vermont’s Greens as well as long stretches in the Chugach Range and Garibaldi Provincial Park. They have treaded over mud, scree, granite, snow, ice and at various points had crampons and snowshoes strapped to them. In fact, they’re story – and The Suburban Mountaineer – recently helped me win a year’s membership with the American Alpine Club compliments of Asolo USA.

Interestingly, I discovered an almost prejudiced attitude about full grain leather boots among other hikers my age and younger when I moved away from the northeast to flat, humid Peaklessburg. I had just come to town and needed to get new boots for the upcoming season. I was looking at three pairs of boots all at similar price points, except the sales guy was pushing me into the lighter, mostly mesh and vinyl boots. He expressed concerns about how heavy and warm the leather boots could get. I was a little puzzled, but stuck to my convictions and bought them.

Later I went hiking in the Monogehela National Forest. They performed great and I didn’t think much of them — always a good sign of reliability. As the summer heat and humidity reached the high 90s (as it frequently does here, sigh) I wore the boots less; then again, I wasn’t going out hiking in this weather either; I’m from Upstate New York and I’m built for a much cooler and colder climate.

After living in Peaklessburg for a while, I visited the northeast to Vermont and hiked Mount Mansfield. This time I wore my light hiking mesh and vinyl running shoes. It was late spring and it rained the day before. If you do the math, that means moisture, dirt, grime on the outside of the shoes, the socks and my feet. I wished for the TPS 520s and for the chance to illustrate what I knew to be their strengths to the fella pushing the light hiking shoes exclusively. Clearly, he just didn’t hike in these conditions.

The last thing I want to point out is the pleasure of having well broken in leather to support you when you’re standing and walking. If you ever heard cowboys in movies romanticize about how their boots are the only way to go… it’s true for me too with these boots.

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Mount Rainier’s Trailhead

/ Andrew Szalay / Leave a comment

To hikers and climbers near Puget Sound, Paradise isn’t in the afterlife or an abstract idea for a Caribbean beach, it’s an actual place. Paradise is an area of reference in the National Park Service map and the name of a valley in the same region of Mount Rainier. The name is also synonymous with the starting point for most visitors’ adventures in Mount Rainier National Park.

Coming from Tacoma or Seattle, people normally pass through Ashford on route 706 – where the guide concessions are located – and enter the park through the Nisqually Entrance in the southwestern corner of the park. From there, visitors continue to the Longmire Museum or just drive straight to Paradise – just 16 miles from the entrance. The road in Paradise itself is mainly in the Paradise Valley. (Keep in mind, road access is limited in the winter based on conditions.)

When most people think of a valley they think of it as the deepest area between two mountainous slopes. Paradise Valley is not a valley like that. Instead it’s actually elevated. It is actually a broad shoulder of the mountain with elevated features on three sides of its plain. On the north end, flowing into Paradise Valley, is Sluiskin Falls – named for the Indian warrior guide to Stevens and Van Trump in 1870 I wrote about earlier – and Narada Falls on the southern end. The water plummets about 200 feet from Narada Falls and out of the “valley.”

Paradise Valley is technically a “hanging valley.” It is also what is left of a glacial cirque. Treeline is approximately 7,000 feet elevation, and Paradise sits at approximately 5,400. There, at that elevation, in winter the landscape can see 30 feet of snow. It buries the Paradise Inn on the western rim of the valley, only to melt and give way to some amazing alpine meadows.

For non hikers and climbers, Paradise is often where the journey stops, but oh what a view! From this hanging valley of alpine flora, you have a front row seat to take in the mountain. If you thought Rainier seemed enormous from Puget Sound, here it would make your HD television’s definition wanting. From there, you can take in the Nisqually Glacier, Gibralter Rock, the edge of the Emmons Glacier and Point Success.

For the hikers and climbers, Paradise is just the starting point. If you’re inclined to hike, there are several trails around Paradise for brisk walk to take in the views or pick up the Wonderland Trail – which circumnavigates the mountain – from the base of Narada Falls. For the climbers, this is where the ascent really begins. More on that later.

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Sources: 1) Schmoe, Floyd, A Year in Paradise: A Personal Experience on Mount Rainier in the Early 1900s, The Mountaineers (1999); 2) National Park Service’s Mount Rainier website.

Mount Rainier: First National Mountain Park

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In 1899 the United States Congress established Mount Rainier National Park. It was the first park where the primary feature was a mountain and not mainly a forest, like Yellowstone, Sequoia, Yosemite and General Grant National Parks before it.

Mount Rainier was designated as federal public land to enjoy and preserve the “outstanding scenic and scientific value for the enjoyment of present and future generations,” according to Theodore Catton on the National Park’s website.

In fact, the park almost did not come to be. The land around it was first designated as forest preserve and covered part of the mountain’s glaciers but not all, and even then, the forest protection did not provide sufficient authorities to ensure the conservation of the mountain’s features. The eventual National Park designation addressed all these issues and more thanks to lobbying from the conservationists in Seattle and Tacoma, Washington.

The establishment of Mount Rainier National Park, according to Catton, also set a precedent for America’s growing National Park system. It signaled that conservation could include more than just natural resources, like forests for lumber and ore deposits for mining, but natural landmarks of beauty.

Mount Rainier tops the Cascade Range and dominates the skylines across the communities of Western Washington. If you live and work in Seattle or Tacoma or fly in for a visit, you’ll get a glimpse of the mountain. Maybe you want to get closer and be absorbed by it.

Without the National Park designation, I wonder whether the park could have a Whistler-like ski resort at its base. Would the area be less pristine? Would commercialism have trivialized the wilderness experience there?

My speculation about what could have been makes me appreciate this mountain and the community around it even more. I’m glad the mountain is where it is and what it is.

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The Great Adirondack High Peaks Linkup

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Andrew Skurka’s superhikes got me thinking about making my own hike across my old territory in the Adirondacks Mountains in Upstate New York. And while I was at it, why not hit all 46 of the High Peaks in one long linkup route?

For a little background, if you hadn’t heard, I’m a repressed alpinist that would settle for a good hike now and then. I’ve been thinking about this hike for several weeks now. Part of it is probably because I just bought a new pair of trail runners. But I know the truth about them. On me, these sturdy track shoes will spend way more time beating pavement in my neighborhood here in Peaklessburg than blazing backcountry routes.

Then I learned that the great High Peaks linkup has been done. It was first done supported, then supported again and again. Finally, in the fall of 2002 it was done in proper style Jim Kobak of Peru, NY and the late Ed Bunk of Voorhesville, NY in 10 and a half days! Then in 2008, Jan Wellford of beautiful Keene Valley, NY and Cory DeLavalle of Albany, NY went in Kobak’s and Bunk’s footsteps and covered the same 196 miles of the improvised route on trail and by bushwhacking in seven and a half days.

No offense meant to those that have gone before them, particularly to Ed Palen, but the approach they took wasn’t about speed or records (though DeLavalle helped Wellford set a record in 2008) but hiking without support! In fact, when Wellford and DeLavalle hiked in 2008, they gallantly turned down a freshly-baked pie in the middle of the linkup, or so the legend goes.

So here is what you need to know in case you want to do this hike:

  • First, it’s been done. Unless you want to break Wellford’s speed record of three days 17 hours and 14 minutes, I suggest you set a more reasonable pace.
  • Practice your backcountry navigation skills with map and compass, GPS and perhaps at altimeter.
  • Do some shorter practice runs in the region. Also note that some of the peaks in the linkup quest are trailless, so be ready for some bushwhacking.
  • Pack appropriately (preferably light), but pack and carry a bear canister. Those bear proof containers are required in the High Peaks Wilderness.
  • Consider taking one lighter daypack to share to take up the peaks while leaving the heavier peaks stashed at the base.

Here is the general idea of the route if you are familiar with the High Peaks Region. This way you can linkup all 46 of the High Peaks in one weaving loop:

“The Wellford Way”

  1. Seward Range
  2. Santononis
  3. Heart of the Eastern High Peaks
  4. Great Range
  5. Dixes
  6. Giant, Porter and Cascade
  7. White Face and Esther

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