Trip Report
Winter Scramble - Anvil Rock
A winter day in May!
Nancy Lloyd
- Mon, May 30, 2022
- Winter Scramble - Anvil Rock
- Camp Muir & Anvil Rock
- Scrambling
- Successful
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- Road suitable for all vehicles
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A few inches of recent soft snow covered old, hard stuff starting at Paradise and increased to around 4 to 6 inches on the upper slopes. We wore crampons at our 8:30 start for easier travel, no snowshoes. I knew there would some clouds and a bit of precip, but was quite surprised upon arrival at Paradise: wind, cold, and snowing! Also, it appeared to be a total white-out above, but we were in for another surprise.
Given the poor conditions at Paradise, I decided we'd give it a go and if the bad weather continued, we'd try to reach McClure Rock (much closer) as an alternate destination. But how pleasantly surprised we were when the sky appeared around 6,100' and Rainier in all it's glory began to show itself.
Many skiers were heading up towards Muir in pretty much ideal snow conditions for their descent. Thin clouds floated over now and then along the way, and we kept an eye towards the east where a heavy bank of clouds appeared to be headed towards us, but the wind was very light. It started to reach us as we prepared to leave the summit, but was concentrated mostly below 7,500'. View of Mt. Rainier from Anvil Rock summit:
I took compass bearings, and coupled with my map and our recorded GPS tracks, we easily found our way back to Panorama Point and the chute for glissading. No glissade opportunities before that. Looking down from just above the Sugarloaf:
The temperature had warmed up during the day, so we post-holed a lot on the way back to Paradise. All in all, a great day out on a winter/spring day and a successful learning adventure for three Olympia Scrambling students!
