Sticking Like Glue on Mt ADAMS: The NFNWR

Staring head on at the North Face of the Northwest Ridge on Mt. Adams. Photo: Sam Chaneles

There’s a feeling in steep skiing when your edges grab and your weight is centered. You feel like glue, like you can stick to any pitch, any mountain face. It’s quite the drug; you look out at a mountainscape, and rather than seeing all the un-skiable lines, you notice what is skiable.

Mt. Adam’s Northwest Face holds a lore amongst Pacific Northwest skiers. Legendary steep skiers Glen Plake and Doug Combs are rumored to first have skied it back in the 90s. From the top, it looks like the edge of the world: A beautiful plumb 45-50 degree face rolling over into infinity. Jason Hummel, a legend in the PNW, described skiing it as “skiing off the edge of the world.” Like the North Faces of the European Alps, it stands as one of the beautiful steep skiing lines of the Cascade volcanoes.

Lane, Michael, and I were late. Stuck in I-5 traffic on a Friday, crammed bumper-to-bumper fighting commuters, we cranked the A/C and hesitated to look at our Google Maps ETA to the trailhead. We simply didn’t want to know; we knew there wouldn’t be much sleep. We stopped at a Chipotle in Puyallup, purchasing an extra burrito for the day ahead. We had a rough plan that involved taking a look at skiing the NFNWR (North Face of the Northwest Ridge, pronounced ‘noof-ner’). We were kind of jonesing for more, though. We discussed options as we drove south in the late evening light of early summer. We could do a double ski of Adams, climb the north side, get eyes on the NFNWR, ski the south, and come back up. It seemed a bit aggressive, but we were eager enough—wake up late, walk up the north side in the early afternoon, and drop the NFNWR by 3 PM. It was tempting to give in to our lazier sides. The thought of seven hours of sleep versus four was quite tempting, but the ephemerality of spring skiing pushed us.

Plenty of time to ponder the day’s objective on the approach: the NFNWR looms. Photo: Sam Chaneles

Crunch…crunch…crunch. We were booting up the steep northwest ridge of Adams the next morning in blustery winds. Looking over to our left, the NFNWR looked skiable. Due to glacial recession, there’s now a rock pinch in the middle of the face, right where it’s at its steepest. Over the last few years, I’ve scoured trip reports of descents of the NFNWR, never noticing any rocks in the middle of the prominent face. Glacial recession is right in front of our eyes here in the Pacific Northwest on the massive glaciers of the stratovolcanoes. Doubts ran through our heads as we took blurry iPhone photos from far away and zoomed in using poor digital zoom. Do you think it goes? How wide does that choke look to you? We pondered back and forth, choking back thoughts of fear and having to transition from skis to crampons in the middle of a huge alpine face. 

Frontpointing up the Northwest Ridge on firm morning snow. Photo: Sam Chaneles

Jhjhjhjhjh…the screech of edges sliding on hard, frozen snow sounds like nails on chalkboard as we ski down the southside of Adams an hour before corn o’clock. In a way, I wish I had a mouthguard for the teeth chattering. Our young, slightly irrational sides are on full display as we opt for a double Adams ski day. We’re prioritizing the NFNWR, and we tell ourselves the southside is just extra, a little “warm up” for our edges. Our emotions are slightly different an hour later as we’re booting up the south side of Adams in perfect corn. We have 2,500‘ vertical feet to ponder our life choices, watching hoards of people ski down the Southwest Chutes in hero corn. Delayed gratification, we remind ourselves.

Five hundred feet from the top, we pop a caffeine pill. The turbo engines come on, and the second booster engine falls back down to earth. Wow, these are definitely performance-enhancing, we joke. With newfound, drug-induced energy, we sprint towards the summit for a second time.

By 3 PM or so, we’re atop the Pinnacle (a sub-summit of Adams) and looking down from atop our line. If it’s going to soften today, now is the time. Corn o’clock doesn’t always come to the steep northwest face of Mt. Adams at 12,000′; some days, it just isn’t hot enough. But with a quick pole drag test, we confirm our hypothesis: the corn is ready. It’s time to harvest. “Toes locked…ready to rock.“ We check our comms. And off we go, to the edge of the earth.

The first 500 feet are low angle as you ski lovely GS turns into the horizon. Then, abruptly, the pitch rolls. Where’s the line go? A turn or two of faith is required; you need to ski into the void to find the way. Chest down the slope, push off the downhill foot I remind myself. I rhythmically get into position, executing the rehearsed steep skiing turns. Glue. It feels like glue. Turn by turn, landing by landing feels like pure adhesion, two dissimilar materials bonded together. I sight the rock pinch that we scoped with our blurry iPhone pictures. Looks wide enough… Once I’m through, I radio Michael and Lane, andI’m through the choke. Michael follows, carefully executing each turn as his corny sluff falls off the cliff face to skier’s right, booming down thousands of feet onto the Adams Glacier. Then Lane follows, in classic Lane fashion, straightlining it through the choke. With my camera in hand, I have a moment of sheer panic when I see Lane gaining speed that I wouldn’t imagine. After Lane comes to a stop beneath me, I chuckle. Dude, you scared the shit out of me.

I snap a photo of Michael beneath, donning a thumbs up with the Adams Glacier beneath. There’s still more to ski but we’re off to the edge of the earth. 

You can find excellent information regarding the PNW’s ski mountaineering history at Lowell Skoog’s alpenglow.org.