drewtabke.com

On Tuesday I skied Mt. Rainier from the summit with friends Hannah and Dan. Check it out, it was rad! We drove up to Paradise at sunset on Monday, and after a few hours of light sleep we started the climb around midnight. We climbed through the night and took a short warming, eating, hydrating, foot care, napping rest at 11,000 ft. as the sun rose at 730AM. We then slowly worked our way to the top in increasing winds that felt like about 60-70mph at the summit, 14,410 ft., at 1PM.

Then we skied down via our climbing route, the Fuhrer Finger. Its an amazing run! No traversing or mediocre skiing, just straight fall-line turns for thousands of feet. When we arrived on the Nisqually Glacier, our friend Amar skied up to congratulate us. He had been watching us climb through his camera’s zoom lens from the Muir Snowfiel. Since the snow was in such good condition, we skied well below Paradise (and our cars) to the bridge that crosses the Nisqually River. Dan and I hung out and relived the 10,500′ vertical ski descent while Hannah and Amar hitchhiked back up to retrieve the autos. Pretty much the coolest run I’ve ever skied. Photos by Dan and Amar.

Finally some light on the eastern horizon.

Amar’s photo of us climbing, taken from literally miles away. Dan and I are seen as two dots, Hannah is behind us, down and to the right.

It was pretty breezy, but luckily not too cold. Mt. St. Helens in the distance.

Skiing down the Fuhrer Finger.

Right where we bumped into Amar. The Finger is directly above Hannah’s head.

The end.

I just got back from Krasnaya Polyana, Russia where I competed in the first stop of the 2009 FWT. I skied quite poorly, and landed a backflip on my face, placing myself firmly in 14th place. Oh well. It was a great trip anyway. My lawyer Davide “Marq” De Masi has been in Val Desire, France all winter, and he was able to fly over and meet me in Russia. He took some really good pictures, which I will now use without his permission.

Video by me, skiing by my lawyer, Davide De Masi. He got me out of that Siberian labor camp amazingly quick!

After a torrential storm dropped almost 20” of rain in the Cascades below 7,000′, and something like 15′ or 20′ of snow above that level, I went on a tour with Amar and Kat on Mt. Rainier. The road to Paradise washed out partially, so we started from the much lower Rampart Ridge trailhead at Longmire. We did a tiny bit of skiing and a lot of walking, but we saw the signs of some really large recent avalanche activity and got some much needed sun.

Rainier! The red line shows the Eastern Success Couloir, maybe later this season?

Mt. Adams to the south.

Amar next to some substantial destructive force.

Amar skinning overrain runnels from the recent storm.

Rainier at sunset. We were still a few miles from the car, and it was a fun trip through the dark forest wondering if we were lost.

Skiing the sometimes overused and thus often grotesquely-misnamed Slut Couloir, near Alpental Resort, Snoqualmie Pass, WA.