Glacier Climb - Glacier Peak/Disappointment Peak Cleaver

Fun climb with a strong group.

We were aiming for a 3 day attempt.  We left Seattle at 5:45AM on Friday.  No problems getting to the trailhead.  There is some washout along the road, so I do recommend high clearance vehicles.

Day 1:  Started hiking about 9AM Friday.  Made excellent time to White Pass in good weather.  Snow free except for angled snow bridges covering the stream crossings.  Be careful here as runout is bad.  At White Pass we hit consistent snow and swapped out of our approach shoes into boots.  From here we were aiming for a notch at 6500ft.  We had a good time traversing the snow with some small ups and down.  After the notch we scrambled down steep scree for maybe 100ft or so, then steep snow perfect for plunge stepping for another 500ft into the bowl.  Everyone did great.  We watched a few other groups struggle with this section and I could see it being more challenging if icy.  Made camp around 6500ft just below the White Chuck Glacier.  Note:  Not much running water in the early season but there are some small pools of water if you search and much better then melting snow for 9 people.  Approach took 9 hrs.

Day 2:  Up at 5AM out at 5:45AM.  Started with low visibility and fogged in.  Stopped for water just out of camp.  Used GPS for navigation and worked fine.  At 8200ft we broke through the low clouds to a blue bird sky.  At 8400ft we roped up to make the zig zag around Disappointment Peak on the Cool Glacier.  We ran into one crevasse the whole day that we decided to step across instead of walk around just for fun.  At 9600ft, and off the glacier, we un-roped.  Scrambled the last 1000ft (first trail/scree then snow) to the summit.  There were some jets flying around the area which got everyone excited.  Went down the same way we came up.  Camp to summit and back took 11hrs.

Day 3.  Woke up to an amazing blue bird day and hiked out taking a lot of pictures.  Camp to Car took 8-9hrs.

Overall:  Long days and need to be in very good shape.  Nothing overly technical on the climb.  Route finding was straight forward even in fog.