Category: USA

United States of America

Skiing the Wickersham Wall – Pt. IV

© 1994 1994, May 17, Day V on the Wall One more perfect day followed before a cloud bank appeared and we narrowly escaped a whiteout on the descent from 14,500′ to the serac camp at 11,000′. Skins worked well on the ascent to 12,800′, where the Canadian Route becomes a knife–edge ridge dropping away …

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TR: Skiing the Wickersham Wall – Pt. III

© 1994   1994: May 11, Day VII of the approach In clear weather we skinned across the Peters Glacier, trying to focus on the views rather than contemplate its hidden dangers. With only two of us on this checkerboard of crevasses we were nervous, the saga of Jim Wickwire and Chris Kerebrock always at …

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TR: Skiing the Wickersham Wall – Pt. II

  1994: May 4-5, The adventure begins… A storm kept our photographer Bill Stevenson, John, and I from departing on May fourth, but we hit a good send-off party with halibut, moose, and beer instead. We finalized gear the next morning, and taxied across the runway in John’s sleek white ’76 Caddy. Motivation was high. …

Keep making backcountry turns

TR (’94): Skiing the Wickersham Wall – Part I

A slide now, while skiing in the center of the upper face, would carry me over 10,000-feet over cliffs and icefalls to a frozen, broken death. But we were confident in the results of our snow stability tests and I was having the run of my life, the culmination of every moment I’ve ever spent in the mountains. The higher power, grinning from ear-to-ear, had given us the nod. We got away with it!

TR: Mt. Shasta, Hotlum Glacier

  This is my favorite time of year. Early summer corn season at Shasta! As usual, I was jibbing solo. The plan was to head to the east side. I didn’t really have a plan beyond that, just trying to get some good turns. Ended up skiing something a bit different than usual. The hunt …

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TR: Mt. Shasta via Brewer Creek

The highlight of the trip though was Emily. Not because she’s young, vivacious, and full of energy, which she is, but because she had consciously chosen to embrace ski mountaineering with a free heel. As she said in her classic Ernie voice, “it just made more sense, it looked more like what I wanted to do, what I was coming from with snowboarding.”

TR: Mt. Shasta – Jibbing from Coquette Falls

Mt. Shasta from the north

The Coquette Falls TH is the only way I’ll be accessing the north side from now on. It provides DIRECT access to the bottom of the Bolam Glacier with a straight line to the summit from there. The road isn’t that bad. Glenn proved a Subie can make it.