Liberty Cap Survey

Liberty Cap Survey

Sept 21 12:00am – Sept 22 10am

Eric, Ross, Alden

Results (NGVD29 datum, same as quad uses):

Liberty Cap has melted 26.3 ft since 2007. New elevation 14,090.7 ft +/-0.1 ft
Liberty Cap key col has melted 13 ft since 2007. New elevation 13,610ft +/-5ft
Liberty Cap prominence is now 481 ft

I’m working on a project to measure the effect of climate change on the elevations of mountains in Washington. Washington is home to the only four peaks in the lower 48 states with icecaps on the summits. These are Rainier Columbia Crest, Liberty Cap, Colfax, and Eldorado. On August 28 I measured Rainer and found that Columbia Crest has melted down 21.8ft, revealing a new summit location on the SW Rim. Thus, Rainier no longer has a permanenent icecap on the summit.

In early September I measured Colfax peak, and found that its summit has stayed a relatively constant elevation, only fluctuating a few feet up or down. The Colfax key col, however, has melted down 16 ft in the past few years.

My next priority was to measure Liberty Cap. I planned to measure the summit and the key col (the liberty cap – rainier col), since both are glaciers and may have changed. While I was up there I also planned to measure the four USGS monuments on Rainier. There was a monument installed near the SW Rim summit, one at Camp Muir, one at McClure Rock, and one at Pardise. These are the brass caps that are either cemented in a rock, sticking out of the ground, or buried under the ground. These are installed so surveyors can measure a location of known elevation and position to corroborate measurements of other nearby features. These measurements would help me corroborate my previous Rainier elevation measurements.

Ross and Alden were interested in joining, and we decided to do a car-to-car push to reduce pack weight and not carry overnight gear. The weather Saturday looked ideal with low wind, clear skies, and freezing levels around 12,500ft. That meant it wouldn’t too hot to affect snow bridge stability but also wouldn’t be uncomfortably cold.

One complication, though, was the ladders on the standard Disappointment Cleaver (DC) route had been pulled the previous weekend and guiding operations had ceased on the mountain. Ladders are generally installed on large crevasse crossings, and the route becomes significantly more difficult without the ladders. Other routes exist, but seemed like a low chance of success. The Emmons Glacier route was apparently very broken up and no teams had found a way up in the past few weeks. Success Cleaver is one route that avoids glaciers, but requires loose-5th class climbing and is not recommended late season.

There was a variation of the DC that IMG guides found that gained the Emmons Shoulder and followed that back to regain the standard DC route above the worst crevasse problems. This route orignally had no ladders, but I heard later in the season a few were installed on widening crevasses. I talked to some guides and they said IMG stopped guiding that variation in early September, but I couldn’t find out why.

On my August climb I had done the standard DC route and remembered a double ladder spanning a wave feature around 12,800ft. I recalled that would be very challenging to cross with the ladders pulled, since the wave crossed almost the entire face. We decided our best chance of success was to attempt the Emmons Shoulder variation. A few friends sent me GPS tracks of the route from late August, so we planned to follow these. We would bring technical ice climbing gear in case we encountered difficulties.

One benefit of climbing late season like this is there is no requirement to show up during business hours at Paradise to talk to a ranger in person to get a permit. We could just show up any time and fill out a self-registration permit available at a kiosk in Paradise.

We slept in the Paradise lot a few hours Friday evening then were moving by midnight. We made good time up to Camp Muir, where we stopped for a break at 2:30am. A ranger came out and talked to us, warning us of rough conditions ahead and nobody else on the upper mountain. That’s what we were prepared for, though.

We crossed the Cowlitz Glacier, then hike around Cathedral Gap to Ingraham Flats. We crossed through the standard camp area, then diverged from the standard DC route. The standard route climbs up the rocky cleaver above Ingraham Flats. The variation, though, drops down 200 ft to go around the bottom of the cleaver. It then passes through an icefield to gain the emmons shoulder, then traverses back to regain the direct DC route.

Directly below Ingraham Flats we encountered some spicy exposed snow bridges next to huge crevasses. We took out the technical tools and careful wove between the crevasses following faint tracks. The tracks didn’t look too old, surprisingly. It appeared someone had been there in the past week.

After dropping 200ft we crossed a flat glacier below the cleaver, then ascended icy snow slopes on the north side. Around 11,500ft we traverse right and encountered our first big obstacle. There was a wand on our side of a crevasse and one on the other side, but no apparent way to cross. It was a 10ft gap and too far to jump. I suspect there used to be a ladder there. I built an anchor and Ross belayed me over to the edge while I looked around. This is the spot the recent tracks disappeared, and I could see why.

However, farther down the crevasse narrowed a bit, so that there was a small pinch point about 10ft down. It looked like it may provide passage. I down climbed on belay to where the crevasse pinched close enough that I could kick one foot out to reach the opposite side. I then stemmed and swung both tools onto the opposite side, than swung over and got both feet into the opposite face. Then I climbed back up 10ft to the opposite lip.

I walked around a little and it appeared the route would work on the other side. So I built an anchor with my tools and a few screws and belayed Ross and Alden over.

We regrouped then wove through some more crevasses to regain the old boot track. It was very faint now, but still partially visible. We soon reached a steep face, and I think that area used to have a fixed rope. I led up, placing a few screws for running protection. The slope angle then eased and we continued zig zagging up a face. There we encountered our second crux. It was a crevasse 5ft wide but severly overhung on the downslope side. This likely also used to have a ladder across.

Conditions were icy enough that the overhang seemed solid, though I still thought it prudent to belay. So I built an ice screw anchor and Alden belayed me as I cautiously inched toward the gap and hopped across. I then built an anchor and belayed them over.

Above that we traversed right and soon gained the Emmons Shoulder. I’d been told once on the shoulder the crevasse issues eased, and indeed that was true. The shoulder was very icy down low, but gradually got softer higher up. We ascended to about 13,300ft before traversing left. I occasionally found fallen wands along the route and placed them back upright in the snow to help us on our return journey.

After a long traverse we met up with the well-worn boot track of the standard DC route and saw crampon tracks from the last ascent on Sept 14, a week earlier. From there the route was straightforward, and we were soon at the SE crater rim around 1pm. From there to the summit involves crossing the inner crater, which is not crevassed. So, to save time since I was feeling good, I took all the survey equipment and rushed across the rim while Alden and Ross took a break.

My top priority was to first measure the SW Rim USGS monument, called “Summit 2”. I had looked around before and couldn’t find it, so had taken a measurement on the highest rock. But in order to corroborate the summit measurement I really needed to also take a measurement of the monument. The surveyors fromt the 2010 team had given me pictures and coordinates of the location.

I went to the spot, which happened to be just a few feet away from the boulder I had measured in August. The snow was all melted now, but I couldn’t see any monument sticking up. This wasn’t too surprising. The 1998 LSAW team was not able to locate the monuments from 1988. The 2010 found one monument had been removed and stolen and another had been vandalized.

There was a chance that the Summit 2 monument brass cap had been removed but the 4ft metal rod below it might still be in the ground. So I swept the area with a metal detector. I couldn’t find any metal rod and the metal detector didn’t pick up a signal. It appeared the rod and cap had been stolen. So I set up my antenna on top of the monument location.

Ross joined by then and we hung out taking pictures for the one-hour measurement. Alden stayed resting at the SE rim. Clouds rolled in andnwhi out and there were occsasional snow flurries, but then it cleared up. After the measurement I packed up and we started over to Liberty Cap. We roped up and descended the north face of Columbia Crest, then crossed over to the east ridge of Liberty Cap. We had to navigate through some crevasses, then hiked up the penitente-covered SE rim to the summit by 4pm.

Time was a bit short for us to be heading down by dark, so I decided to just do a 30 minute measurement on the summit. I set up the tripod on the highest snow/ice then packed snow around the tripod legs so they wouldn’t heat up in the sun. This can be a problem if one leg melts through the snow and tilts the tripod, and I wanted to avoid that.

While the unit was running I took a sight level measurement down to the Liberty Cap – Rainier key col. I could then use triangulation using the measured height of Liberty Cap and that measured angle to calculate the elevation of the key col. This would save us the time of setting up the GPS on the col, so we could instead hustle back down the mountain before dark.

At 4:30pm we packed up and retraced our steps back up to the crater rim. We tagged Columbia Crest, then walked across to the SE Rim. Alden had been patiently waiting, and gave us some fresh water he’d melted. We had an hour left before sunset, so quickly roped up and headed down.

We retraced our route back down the main DC to 13,400ft, then traversed across to the Emmons Shoulder by sunset. Alden took over navigation from there, and we proceeded cautiously down the icy slope. We then left the shoulder and hiked back to the upper crux, the crevasse jump.

I was happy to be hitting this late in the day when it was nice and cool again and frozen up. I built an anchor and belayed Alden as he jumped across. Then he built an anchor and belayed me and Ross across. From there we retraced our route back down, downclimbing the steep face with running pro, and soon reached the final crevasse crossing.

I downclimbed on belay, then ice climbed up the other side. I then belayed Ross and Alden over and we were finally back to easy terrain. We hiked back down to the base of the cleaver, then wove back up through the crevasses to Ingraham Flats. From there it was an easy hike back to Camp Muir by 1am.

Alden and Ross packed up and headed down, but I had a few more measurements to do. I used the metal detector and tried to find the Muir monument on the helipad, but I was not successful. Maybe if I had a shovel and a better metal detector and wasn’t so tired I could have found it. So I just set up the tripod over the coordinates of the monument and took a 1 hour measurement between 2:30am – 3:30am. I would then subtract 11 inches from that to get the approximate monument elevation.

I then packed up and hiked down the icy Muir snowfield to McClure Rock. Luckily the monument there was a brass cap stuck in concrete on the top of a big boulder. I had a big enough tripod to surround the boulder and mount the antenna for another measurement between 5am-6am. I was treated to a nice sunrise while waiting in a sheltered area behind the monstrous summit cairn out of the wind.

I then packed up and hustled down to Paradise for the last measurement. I moved the truck over to the side of the road to the south end of the parking lot. The monument is supposedly buried 5 inches underground 5.6ft from the pavement edge. My metal detector didn’t pick anything up. So I again just took a measurement on the top of the dirt.

Finally by 10am I packed up and headed home. 34 hours of not sleeping left me tired but I had some red bull and skittles stashed in the truck to keep me alert.

At home I processed the measurements with OPUS. I got Liberty Cap has melted 26.3 ft since 2007. It’s new elevation is 14,090.7 ft +/-0.1 ft. The Liberty Cap key col has melted 13 ft since 2007 and its new elevation is 13,610ft +/-5ft. I got this number by using my measured angle, with error +/- 5 arcminutes, to get a relative height from the summit. I then subtracted this value from the summit height.

Interestingly, Liberty Cap has melted even more than Columbia Crest (21.8ft). The saddle has melted much less, though.

My monument measurements match up well with the previous 2010 LSAW measurements. This increases confidence that the rainier summit measurements are accurate. Also, my measurement for the SW Rim exactly matches my previous measurement to the nearest inch. This increases confidence even more in my Rainier measurements, given that I got the exact same value on two independent measurements on different days (Aug 28 and Sept 21).

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