Give me Liberty or give me Liberty (ridge)
Robert H and I wanted training and practice. Soon we'll both be in Peru doing steep snow in the Cordillera Blanca. We also wanted to ski the steep snow. So we decided to make for the summit Rainier via the celebrated Liberty Ridge. A friend of Wendy E who crashed at our place said the snow was phat, and we were down with that! The forecast was good and the line was kickin, so we thought about stickin. We started off hiking in our boots. The snow was supposed to be good after maybe a mile, so we didn't want extra weight. Mistake 1. We maybe made it to within 1/2 mile of the Interglacier basin before we found continuous snow that was worth skinning on. We got to the basin, enjoyed watching ants of people slowly trudge up both St. Elmo's pass and the Integlacier, and made haste to St. Elmo's ourself. The top of the route came into view. We crossed the Winthrop roped because of some big-ish crevasses, headed over a rib and various snow and rock bounds and then found a w