Edith Creek
Route Details
Area - Paradise Mt. Rainier, WA
Access - Approach begins at the Paradise parking lot. Gate to Paradise opens 9am during winter months. Check the NPS website for latest schedule. From Paradise parking follow the Skyline trail towards Myrtle Falls. This will take you into a large depression zone. Continue to the northeast until you gain the ridgeline.
Ski descent - 1000 ft (back to road)
Guides
Beacon Guidebooks Link
Local Beta - Copper Creek Inn is a great spot to grab food on the way out of the park. Their restuarant used to have an espresso milkshake that made the drive back a lot more tolerable. Recently you can get an off-menu coffee milkshake.
Trip Report November 2023
The first snow of the season fell October 25th. A week earlier, Antoine, Olly, and had been getting our legs ready for touring and had completed a 19 mile hike from Mailbox Peak to Putrid Pete's via Dirty Harry. The late October snow wasn't enough though to get us back on the slopes. We had to wait until a series of storms hit the area the second week of November before it was worth dusting off the rock skis. By Sunday November 12th we decided there was enough snow at Paradise on Mt. Rainier to make it worth the 2.5 hour drive south from Seattle. Olly had already left the area to visit family back east, and my front bumper was smashed in after a hit and run, so Antoine offered to drive and we picked up Titouan on the way to make it a party of three.
It was fun making the drive down to Rainier. We hadn't been in that area since our Rainier trips back in June. We arrived at the Longmire gate around 9:50 am and found the parking lot jamp packed. We weren't the only folks excited for ski season. A park ranger waived us over and explained that the snow plow had broken down and it would be a few more minutes until they opened the road up to Paradise. I wasn't surprised to hear. It seems like every year they are a little rusty making the transition to winter operations around the park. Antoine went off to forage mushrooms and Titouan and I checked out the gift shop and national park lodge. Sometime around 10:20 am the gate opened and up the road we went behind a line of others looking to lay down their first tracks of the season.
During the drive up to Paradise we noticed the Muir snowfield still in very early season condiitons. The ridgelines around the entire area seemed barren, completely windswept. We decided to check out the tiny chutes and bowls just northeast of Myrtle falls, east of Panorama Point. This area In the late summer this area is easily accessable via the well maintained Golden Gate and Skyline hiking trails.
We roughly followed the summer Skyline Trail from Paradise to the bridge over Myrtle Falls. The trail had about a meter of snow on it, and the bridge over Myrtle Falls had enough snow covering it that the hand rails were only barely visible. From there we generally followed the summertime Golden Gate trail to the ridgeline at approximately 6200 feet. The snow was dense, but fortunately not wet enough to stick to our skins on the climb. We made a few laps in the area, wrapping up the day with a 1000 foot drop down to the road (this route is called Edith Creek in the Beacon Guidebook). This way back does require a very short climb on the road back to the parking lot, but keeps you from having to make the longer traverse back across the bridge at Myrtle Falls.
Overall a great early season day. We headed out fairly early and swung by Copper Creek Inn for a late lunch. We decided to try to get back to the area that next weekend. The next Saturday and Sunday it was storming too bad though, so Titouan and I made the trip back Monday the 20th. It had snowed around 8 inches the day before, but had been extremely windy with winds at the summit of over 60 mph.
Titouan and I were thinking to take it a little easy, maybe try for Muir if the snowfield looked good but we were also thinking to do a little exploration instead potentially. There is an area on the Cowlitz Glacier I had been wanting to check out for a while. Unfortunately, as soon as we got to the parking lot and began gearing up I realized I had forgotten by skins. It was a beautiful, sunny day with fresh snow, and I felt terrible for having dragged Titouan all the way down there without all of my gear. I couldn't believe it either, I had never forgotten something so critical before.
While discussing the situation, someone overheard us and recommeneded I try strapping pine branches to my skis. I figured it was worth a try. I only had two ski traps though, so we made that work until we could borrow a couple more from another group on the way up. We were both surprised at how well it worked! It was a lot more work though than having skins, and so we decided to only go as far as Panorama Point and then ski the east side off Panorama down to the area we had been skiing the weekend before.
We skiied the backside of Panorama towards the area we had skiied the weekend before. This area was fairly wind loaded and we both took it pretty cautious, making a heavy cut at the top before committing. It flattened out more than we expected and we had to skin a short section to get back to the area where we had been doing laps a few days earlier. Fortunately, I had kept my pine branches strapped to my pack, but they were starting to look pretty ragged and my bases were beginning to get sticky with sap.
We made the decsent towards Myrtle Falls. Titouan wanted to get one more lap in, so we hung to the right and gained the saddle just below Panorama Point for a few extra turns.
