Glacier Basin (6,200 Feet) to the Winthrop Glacier (+/-7,200 feet), via St Elmo Pass (7,400 Feet
We set off from our cozy Glacier Basin campsite in the dark. To travel light, we leave the body and poles of our 3-person mountaineering tent to be picked up on the return trip, bringing with us only the rain fly and the tent footprint tarp, both of which we can wrap ourselves in or use as tarps in a worst-case scenario. Passing 6 or 7 tents occupied by snoring trekkers and climbers, we head out in the dark across the broad, snowy expanse of Glacier Basin and cross the White River. We traverse up towards what we think is the trail to St Elmo’s pass, looking for a set of switchbacks that we could see leading to the pass when we arrived in the basin earlier that afternoon. After some uncertain boot track following, we find what we think are the switchbacks, and gain the top of St. Elmo Pass. We immediately start the descent to the Winthrop glacier, quickly losing several hundred feet of the altitude we had just gained, finally reaching the surface of the Winthrop feet below the pass.
The traverse across the Winthrop glacier in the dark is nicely straightforward – with each of us comfortably ensconced in his own little bubble of headlamp illumination, we follow a well-defined boot trail across the glacier, which has enough snow cover that we feel comfortable not roping up for the first half of the traverse. After an hour or so, we finally start to encounter some crevasses and sketchier looking terrain, so we get out the rope, and continue until we finally hit some truly gnarly crevasses and holes, and lose the boot path in the dark.
Short Bivy on Winthrop Glacier
At this point, it is only an hour or so until it starts to get light out, and it’s getting foggy out, reducing visibility even further, so we pause for a mini-bivy, get out our sleeping pads, have a seat, and relax for a while.
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