Liberty Ridge Conditions

Anyone been on this year?

This is a little dated now.  A friend found this while trolling on FB.  I hope it helps.  I too was having trouble finding a condition reports.

Finally bagged Liberty Cap on Saturday 7/9 via Liberty Ridge car-to-car solo on skis. Approach, route, and descent were all in excellent condition. The ridge was almost all snow, including a ramp over the top 'schrund. Snow bridges on the approach are melting -- East side of Curtis Ridge and West side of Liberty Ridge -- and will probably make it more difficult within a week. Go get it! 

Long story - Started out as a chill remote climb, unexpectedly made friends with a group of guides high on the mountain, watched one of them ragdoll down the mountain into a crevasse, then helped with a drawn out helicopter rescue. Apparently because I wanted to do something hard for my birthday.

I’ve been wanting to climb this route for years, and got some recent beta suggesting it was in incredible condition. Unable to find a partner, I decided to apply for a solo permit, unexpectedly receiving approval in less than 24 hours. I figured I’d ski the glaciers to mitigate crevasse risk, and protect and rope solo any needed sections. I started with ambitions of going fast and light, but I ended up carrying enough gear to consider it a “conditioning hike.”

I thought my plan was hosed when I arrived at White River just before close for my climbing permit and the ranger preempted with “Everything is completely full through the end of the weekend.” Luckily for me, I wasn’t climbing the Emmons route, and I wasn’t camping, so they could book me in any zone on the route, including the summit. I had planned to start immediately, but I was tired enough that I rehydrated a dinner and made a 3 hour attempt at sleep.

The first 4 miles went quickly to the final running water above Glacier Basin where I transitioned to boots and skis, stashed shoes, and loaded up with 4L of water for the long day, because my pack wasn’t heavy enough already.

The approach to Liberty Ridge consumed my entire pessimistic time estimate as route finding by headlamp in unfamiliar terrain was hard, and the repeated transitions with a heavy pack and second-guessing my route kept eating time. Climbing to St Elmo Pass was easy on skis. Descending to the Winthrop Glacier was steep loose choss that would have been difficult to reascend. Skied then booted across the Winthrop, occasionally following a faint boot track. Traversing the Curtis Ridge boulder fields in ski boots with skis A-framed was the lowlight of the approach. There is an epic moat on the east side of Curtis Ridge, but I was able to cross it on a thin and soft snow bridge, momentarily thankful for skis.

Climbing up the Carbon Glacier to Liberty Ridge was really peaceful and enjoyable, weaving through seracs and crevasses. Felt like I had the entire mountain to myself. Lots of thin and narrow snow bridges, but it all felt frozen solid, which was why I was there in the dark. With the sky slowly lighting up, I was playing the game of “will the headlamp battery last” as it was flashing on reserve power. I was saving the second battery for emergency use later. The mountain lit up in alpenglow as I was gaining the toe of Liberty Ridge. I was thankful there was still a snowbridge onto the west side of the ridge, albeit steep, thin, and exposed. As the ridge started to warm in the sun, rocks started raining, forcing me to move quickly through the lower rock bands. A few mixed steps but otherwise mostly chill aerobic climbing.

Most of the route is no fall terrain, but I guess I’m getting desensitized as it didn’t feel bad. I was able to find a faint boot track up the ridge, but it was filled in with spindrift and slush, so wasn’t much help, and was an epic slog in the baking eastern sun as I planted 4000 vertical feet of knee-deep postholes. I tried to practice mindfulness and appreciate the experience, despite the sufferfest, regrets about my lack of fitness, chronic injuries, zero acclimatization, and heavy pack.

A group of four guides caught me just above the Black Pyramid around 13k ft. They thanked me for the bootpack that they’d cruised up, and we alternated the remaining work to the summit. Two of them had skis and were planning to split on the summit and descend in pairs. The altitude was really kicking my ass around 14k ft and I really had to slow down and I was thankful to now have a bootpack to follow. The weather started to turn as we stood on Liberty Cap, snowing and threatening a whiteout, and given the late time of day, and the guides’ gracious offer for me to descend with them, I opted to skip Columbia Crest this time. I roped up with the two skiers and we descended to Columbia Col before unroping and transitioning to skis for some decent turns on hardpack snow.

Then I thought I watched one of the guides die. He wiped out on ice and couldn’t arrest his fall as he slid down the glacier. I thought he’d stop when he hit a serac, but he bounced over it, disappeared, then ragdolled up in the air as he hit another serac before finally disappearing into a crevasse. That was hard to watch. My brain raced into rescue mode, but I was stuck on ice myself. We’d almost caught up to the other pair of guides who were hiking down, so I continued on the ice to catch them. As they rushed over to help, I was still on 30+ degree ice and I had “do not cause a mass casualty event” going through my head, so I placed screws and hung from my harness as I inefficiently transitioned as fast as I could from skis back to crampons. Those few minutes were awful, feeling helpless to assist as I had to get myself unstuck first. I guess there probably wasn’t much I could contribute to the three guides already in rescue mode, besides not making the situation worse.

By the time I was able to make it back to the crevasse, grabbing some yardsale'd gear on my way, he'd not only survived, but had put his crampons on in the crevasse and climbed out.   He was doing well on initial evaluation, coherent and mobile but realized he’d hit his head and was running on adrenaline.

I knew there was a helicopter on standby in the park for rescues, and one of the guides had an NPS radio, but there was initial disagreement whether to airlift him off. Visibility was intermittent and winds were gusting high. The rangers said they’d only fly if there was “immediate threat to life, limb, or eyesight,” a helicopter would be hours away if one could be deployed at all, and we should walk him down and/or bivy. Walking down short-roped, he was getting worse, stumbling and incoherent, and we were barely descending 500ft per hour. Eventually the rangers agreed to fly and airlift him off by 200ft long line. We dug a flat platform into the hill at 12,800 ft as the helicopter flew up.

With the guy enroute to a hospital, the remaining 4 of us roped up and hiked down through knee-deep slush. I would have preferred to ski, but it felt inappropriate.

After a break at Camp Schurman and a quick mixed scramble up to Steamboat Prow at sunset, I swapped in my extra/“emergency” headlamp battery and agreed to meet the guides back in the parking lot for farewells. The snow had now refrozen into a heavy breakable crust, and after a few survival turns, I decided the risk of injury wasn’t worth it, and hiked down until the snow softened lower for some really enjoyable turns in the slush. After some GPS sleuthing, I was able to relocate my shoes and jogged out to the awaiting car and my second freeze-dried dinner. Then for the ironically most dangerous part of the whole climb - the drive home.

Thanks so much!