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| Featured Trip: Merchant in the Spring |
| Author | John (snowslug) |
| Date | May 18, 2009 |
| Report |
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The route up Merchant is fairly straight forward: take the trail to Barclay Lk, cross the bridge and then head uphill into a gully. Then follow a second, narrow gully right, up to a broad basin and bare left to the summit. However, the gullies are avalanche and rock-fall prone and when free of snow have a number of difficult steps and ledges to cross. Hence the attempt in the spring. This eliminated the steps (couldn't even find a few of them), but subsituted soft, knee-deep snow most of the way. The snow slabs were stable, but the top, recent layer was like slush and tended to flow down chutes in slow moving rivers. Although we judged the avalanche danger to be low-moderate, self-arrest on the soft layer might not have been possible. Views from the summit were good (Baker to Rainier).
photos posted to http://picasaweb.google.com/sanford.stm
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WASHINGTON
ALPINE
CLUB
