Basic Glacier Climb - Little Tahoma/East Shoulder

C2C of Little Tahoma with Sean, Jacob, Ryan, Amrit and Rick.

No avalanche issues this time around. But felt some magic happen today, the mountain kept moving away from us, as we continued to gain elevation and distance and the mountain took us 10.5 hours to get to the summit

The wild flowers are plenty in the summerland trail. We started at 12:05 from the TH. The parking lot was near full. Another party which we later saw close to the frying pan glacier, started around 1:30 from the TH and reached the rock section before us. They were the only other humans we saw till the evening mayhem at Summerland (every single person in summerland had a face covering or a mask)

Route finding was easy and we took the boulder route to meany crest instead of snow, as the snow was rock hard at 6'500-7'000 feet. There is a clear ridge route if one wants to avoid all the snow. Continuous snow is from 7'000 feet, but we changed from running shoes to mountaineering boots at 6'400 to tackle bigger boulders and some patches of hard steep snow.

(Last source of running water below meant crest bench)

Once at the camp site (now snow free). We roped up and headed up both the glaciers. Crevasses and rock fall debris are plenty, but easy to spot

Leisurely pace here as some in the group, started feeling the elevation or were gassing out. Made it to the notch, this long 1.5k feet side hilling on solid snow was way better than breaking trail a month back.

From here we went up the snow gulley (which was crevassed as well) to the base of the rock. This is where the other party of two over took us and went into a blur as we nudged 50 feet at a time as folks were getting tired

The rock from snow to the gulley is chossy where not exposed. Solid where exposed. So YMMV on choss part. I love choss (so I loved this part)

Set up a hand line for the summit part for the group, since we had varying skill levels in the group.

Up time 10:35
Down time 6:31

From the summit, getting down on the steep snow was a little tricky for one of the members in the party, so getting down to 9'600 feet flatter area on frying pan took a lot longer. On this already long day. Folks were also running out of water.

Made it back to the camp spot, melted some water and headed down the snow patches to the meadows. Changed to trail runners and back to summerland and to the TH