Mt. Adams climb

In the beginnig of August, a big group of us headed south to Mt. Adams to attempt to climb the second highest peak in Washington. Adams can be a technical climb, but the route we took was not technical. It was steep. We camped the first night at Lunch Counter, then got up before dawn to head up. Sunrise was beautiful -- great mountain shadows on the clouds and landscape. We had amazing views of Mt. St. Helens and Mt. Hood from our perch. As we started climbing, the winds picked up and the clouds came in. I had one glimpse of the true summit from the top of the false summit, then everything became totally white. We made it to the top, but our visibility was reduced to about 10 feet of solid white, and the winds were probably blowing a sustained 40 mph. It was an interesting trip down. Once we made it back to the false summit, we glissaded in the luge-like trough down to our camp. What took us about 3 hours to climb took about 5 minutes to go down.

Next year, we will return for the view from the top!