Del Campo Climb

The fog added ambiance to Del Campo's many gendarmes.

Friends in High Places

Me and Nate got up early and were on our way by 5:30, Memorial Day, on our journey through the Mountain Loop Highway. The idea was to climb Del Campo and then practice crevasse rescue techniques in the same day, thus we brought harnesses, rope, slings, etc.
I expected the conditions to be easy, as I visited Del Campo about a month ago by myself on a beautifully cloudless day with excellent, if still very thick, snow conditions.
I made it up most of the way, only to be scared off the summit cone by falling ice and rock when I was alone and helmetless.

This time, though, we got a full taste of ridiculous Cascade weather: there was thick overcast, smothering fog and high winds, rain, snow, sleet, moments of brilliant sunshine, and a double rainbow throughout the course of the day. As the great Fred Beckey says, the weather in the Cascades is actually very predictable: either it's raining, or it will be soon.

The trail was steep but relatively short, as it always is, and the snow started at the first big gully directly below the peak, as it usually does in late spring and summer.
Conditions were much harsher than I expected. Though the snow was fairly firm and nice for the most part, it no longer covered everything nicely and evenly like it did a month ago. We followed the trail as far as we felt like, but the snow had melted in bizarre and delicate shapes on and around the trail, making progress this way difficult.
So we struck off to find our own route. As always, route finding on Del Campo is a bit of a challenge in late spring, though the snow still covered enough of the cliffs, waterfalls and slippery slopes to let us weave around obstacles on the snow.
I had intended to reach Gothic Basin at the low point on its edge closest to Del Campo, where the standard route up the southwest ridge of Del Campo starts, but we started cutting up too early and met the ridge in the middle instead. This route was fine for the most part, and actually more direct, but there were several very steel sections of snow interspersed with deep treewells and rockwells, one of which Nate fell into (without major injury) on the descent through the mushy, slippy afternoon snow. From what I can remember, this can be avoided on the way up by traversing farther to the left (south) before starting straight up the ridge in late spring.
Then we continued up the standard route up to the notch below the summit.