Emmons Glacier Crevasse Bivy Site (approx 10,000 feet) to Seattle via Camp Shurman (9,500 feet) and Glacier Basin (6,200 feet)
We wake in the morning to more snow covering our sleeping bags and gear, and sunlight streaming into our crevasse. We quickly pack, and I climb out of the crevasse, which turns out to be surprisingly easy after clearing away the loose snow that had prevented an easy exit the night before. The coil in the end of the rope has lodged itself in snow on the lip of the cliff, thankfully only feet above our crevasse, so I quickly climb around, dislodge it and drop it down to Dan in the crevasse. While waiting for Dan, I look around and notice a large group of people starting the ascent from Camp Shurman. Dan finishes packing, I haul our packs up out of the crevasse on the rope, and Dan ascends up into the sunlight and relentless wind. I scamper up to the top of our rappel rope, disassemble the anchor, and down-climb back to Dan. We immediately rope up, and haul ass down the glacier, easily navigating around crevasses in the bright sun.
Dan Descending Emmons Glacier, Guided Climbing Group in Distance Near Our Crevasse Bivy Site
With no sign of Hooman so far, we’re starting to get a bit worried, but then we meet up with the group of climbers coming up the glacier. This team turns out to be a group of guided climbers, and not only have they been informed of our situation by the rangers, they saw Hooman descending to Camp Shurman earlier that morning. Dan and I are indescribably relieved, and we continue descending the route, passing the solid snow-walled large group camping areas on Emmons Flats. When we finally arrive at the bomb-shelter of a ranger hut at Camp Shurman, Hooman comes out to greet us, looking none the worse for wear, except for some apparent frostbite on his nose. He tells us about his night.
Hooman’s Story
Thru some miscommunication, or just because we were all beyond exhaustion and not thinking straight, Hooman kept going as Dan and I were in the process of establishing our crevasse camp. Even after hearing me yelling, whistling and seeing the light of my headlamp, he continued down the glacier in the dark with the intention of reaching Camp Shurman that night if possible. He hiked until around 1:00 in the morning, at which point he decided to sit down on the glacier and wait out the night. Fully exposed to the wind and snow, he anchored himself onto a 30 degree ice slope with an ice screw, and sat down to wait for daylight. At around 2:00 – 2:30, he stood up to answer the call of nature, and as he sat back down, he realized that the tether that he had tied his sleeping bag to the anchor with had snapped, and the bag had blown away. He saw the dark outline of the bag sitting on the edge of a crevasse in the distance, and as he got up to go retrieve it, the wind took it and sent it out of sight into the crevasse. Without a rope, he couldn’t really safely expect to retrieve it from the crevasse, so he sat back down, and hunkered down for the next few hours, waiting until it got light. Finally, it got light out, and he headed down the glacier towards Camp Shurman, and reached it in the early morning, waking the ranger up and informing him that Dan and I were still up on the glacier. The exposed bivy left him with a bad case of sun and wind burn on his nose, but he was otherwise intact.
Photo of Maurice Herzog looking haggard after his Famous Epic Climb of Annapurna, taped up in Camp Shurman Ranger Hut. We could relate...
Dan and I finally caught up to him several hours at Camp Shurman later, and after a joyful reunion, we re-hydrated with what we all agreed was the best water we had ever tasted, melted and filtered courtesy of Jeremy, the climbing ranger staffing Camp Shurman. Camp Shurman itself was perched on what can only be described as one of the most astounding pieces of real estate that I have ever seen, an exposed triangle of exposed rock with sweeping 300 degree views of the Emmons and Winthrop glaciers, the Russell Cliffs above the Winthrop, Little Tahoma (a sub-peak of Mt Rainier and itself the 3rd highest peak in WA), and soaring cliffs behind the camp. After a phone call to the family to let them know I was alright, we packed up again, thanked Jeremy profusely for the water and conversation, and headed towards Glacier Basin camp to retrieve our tent.
Entertainment Cabinet at Shurman Ranger Hut
After a quick hike with lots of downhill slogging thru comfortable cushy wet snow, we arrived at our tent site, where we had been warned to expect an angry lecture about taking up tent space real estate for extended periods of time from one of the wilderness rangers. After apologizing profusely, we packed up and continued down to the parking lot, another couple of hours down the trail. Midway down the trail, the can of Red Bull that I had been saving for some extra energy on the descent fell out of my jacket where I had been thawing it, hit a sharp rock, and started spraying everywhere, so I was forced to shotgun the entire can of precious caffeinated liquid, which was, to my dehydrated system, the equivalent of a hypodermic needle injecting pure caffeine directly into the bloodstream. Suffice it to say that I was more than a bit energetic on the remainder of the descent. Dan and I arrived at the car, ecstatic to change into dry, clean clothes. We sat back, ate some more food, and waited for Hooman to arrive.
Unbeknownst to us, Hooman had sat down for a break on the trail, and exhausted from the night before, fell asleep for a 30 minute nap. He finally joined us at the car, and we headed out of the park, leaving our official “off the mountain” report at the White River Ranger station. At this point, the caffeine in my system gave out on me, and this, combined with exhaustion, the food I just eaten, and the release of tension from getting off the mountain alive, caused me to basically go into a coma, and I sat in the back of Hooman’s car in a stupor, incoherent, head rolling and drooling for the remainder of the ride back to Seattle, waking only when we pulled into several restaurants only to find them closed or too full of people for us to have the patience to wait for a sit down meal. We finally reached Seattle, unfortunately for Dan, after the REI parking garage had closed, meaning that after the 6 day near-death ordeal that we had just endured, Dan would have to bike to work the next day in order to pick up his car. We stopped at a Taco Del Mar, grabbed a burrito, I got dropped off at my family’s condo on Queen Anne Hill, took a shower, ate dinner in an odd, trance-like haze of relief and exhaustion, and went to bed.
~THE END~
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