We had to plan this years' climbs around a later season schedule because Chris was in a kind of transistional phase, part of which was his moving out to Seattle. Anyway, complexities associated with his move necessitated a July trip. Since the previous winter's snowfall was less that normal in the northwest, I began to have some concerns about what the snow conditions would be like for a rather late season series of climbs.
We had decided on Hood again to acclimatize on (besides, I love Mt. Hood and I would like to climb it every year). Then Mt. Rainier to be able to build in a number of extra days for waiting out its notoriously frequency of bad weather. Finally, if time and our ability allowed, we would climb Mt. Adams.
Via email, Chris and I discussed routes. Chris loves to propose the more challanging routes. In fact for a while he even had me exited abiout doing a traverse of Hood, acsending the exposed Cooper Spur route on the north side and coming down the Palmer Glacier route on the south side. The season's poor snow conditions helped us out of this delirium and we realized that the sticking to the tried and true Palmer Route was all that was practical for a mid-July climb. In a similar fashion, the north route on Mt. Adams gave way to the standard south route, which turned our to have its own rewards in the form of great glissading on the upper mountain.
--Gary
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