Ken, Ann, John and I met at the Starbucks in Federal Way and piled into John's truck for the drive out to Adams. We arrived at the Killen Creek trailhead and were on our way around 10am. We hiked out in warm weather and overcast skies to the vicinity of the high camp at 6,900 feet where Ken found a sheltered tent site that he had used in the past. Low-lying mist shrouded the North-West Ridge but later in the day the clouds lifted giving a glimpse of likely access points onto the north face. After a leisurely dinner it was time for bed.
We were moving by 3am on Sunday morning under clear skies and a bright half-moon. Headlamps were in order for negotiating some strips of moraine but by the time we reached the snowfields there was enough light to switch them off. Our original plan had been to ascend steep snow at the base of the north face of the north-west ridge but we spotted a nice ramp at the right edge of the Adams Glacier a little higher up so we opted for that instead. A moat separated the glacier from the face which presented an initial challenging move which involved sinking ice tools into the ice and stepping across and putting crampon points on the rocks on the far side of the moat.
Once we were on the face the rest of the climb was sustained 45-degree hard snow with an occasional patch of ice. We set running belays with pickets the whole way. We had two rope teams of two and each person brought two pickets. The leader on the first rope team would take all eight pickets and then would place one every rope length with the follower on the second rope team cleaning. When the leader was down to two pickets he would set an anchor and belay everyone up and the person who had collected the pickets would then lead out. The pitches seemed to go on forever. Fortunately, the styrofoam-like snow held crampon points solidly. I used my ice axe and ice tool in the low dagger position. For my feet I alternated between having both feet splayed and flat-footing with one foot while front-pointing with the other. By the time we covered the last couple of rope-lengths, the snow was soft enough that we could kick steps.
We reached the summit plateau by 2pm, eleven hours after we had started. I was feeling pretty wiped out by then. We unroped and took some time to eat and drink. The weather had been clear and calm with a benign blanket of cloud cover below for the whole day but the forecast was for a front to move in late on Sunday. We could see the high wall of dark clouds coming from the north, first engulfing Mt. Rainier and moving toward us. A solid cover of snow on the upper part of the North Ridge made for a less tedious, if somewhat more risky, descent. Somewhere below 10,000 feet we hit the gritty volcanic scree of the descent trail. A light rain was falling by 6:00pm when we reached our tents. We were back at the cars by 8:30pm.
