Mazama Glacier via Cold Springs Trailhead

Mazama Glacier on Mount Adams

We planned a family trip up Mount Adams, my wife Natalia, myself,and our 12-year old son Cadence.

The Bird Creek Trailhead is still closed so we approached via Cold Springs. Left the trailhead at 11a. Up the South Route Trail for about a mile and half, went right on the Round the Mountain Trail. Went about 2 miles until we could see up the mountain towards the Gotchen Glacier.



We worked our way up the snow fields towards the Gotchen, went over a small pass, dropping into a snow filled basin with a small ice filled lake at the bottom. Passed through the basin, and climbed up some steeper snow fields heading to the pass at the eastern end of the basin.





From that pass, you look easterly and can see Sunrise Camp on the far ridge.



We traversed the snow fields below a number of steep snow filled chutes and above a larger glacial lake. We arrived at the Sunrise Camp high camp at 4p. Camp was empty.

At camp, there were numerous rock walls to block the wind, the ground was dry on the ridge,and a number of small creeks were flowing around the camp area. We lounged and relaxed until sunset and went to sleep. We were the only party at Sunrise Camp that night.

Waking at 3a and leaving camp at 4a, we roped up and headed up the right side of the glacier, reaching a rock ridge about 750 feet up where a crevasse reaches pretty far across, passing above the crevasse on the right and working our way up the right side above another large crevasse on the right.



Reaching the second steep section of the glacier, the snow was very firm, we started up the left side and made an upward trending traverse rightwards to the ridge and worked our way up this side to the top of the snowfield.



From this point, we traversed leftwards to the head of the South route and pulled over the top of the snowfield onto the plateau at 7a. There were only about 5 teams on the south route that day, so it wasn't totally busy.



We traversed the Plateau and worked our way up the snowfield in the center of the summit pyramid and summitted at 815a. We spent about 30 minutes on top with only one other party and then headed down. We followed our route back down in quickly softening snow, passing a late starting party on our way, reaching camp at 1145a.

We lounged at camp for a bit then broke camp and headed back to the Cold Springs trailhead via our approach route, at 1p. We arrived back at our truck at 5p.

Images

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