Up in Wa. at the folks place, Mt. Adams is in their back yard about 20 miles away. Checked with the Mt. Adams RD, Cold Springs road still under snow 5.5 miles from the trailhead. Looks like you can get to the shelter past the lower Morrison Creek trail where it crosses the road, but that's going to make for a looooooong approach. Hopefully by late June/early July the road will be clear to the upper Morrison trailhead, that's only 3 miles from CS trail.

Thanks for fill-in !

billisfree wrote:Thanks for fill-in !

Understandable ... some folks would rather take the looooooonngg way Home ..

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HAjYoe63MSA[/youtube]

Recall... two years ago, ONE snowbank stood in the way of reaching the trailhead. Forest service wouldn't plow it out. So a gang of climbers attacked the snowbank with shovels and opened the road.

Last year I was there on the 4th of July. You could get .75mi past the gate, 2.25 miles blocked. Looked like a ton of snow and really crappy at first. About half a mile, snow cleared up but there were blowdowns everywhere. At the campground, the snow was still about 3-4'. When I was up there back in January this year, the road was ice about 6-8" thick from the lower Morrison trail up another few miles, then there was several feet of crusty snow. With what has fallen since then, hard to say. I'm shooting for around the 4th again if I can get to the CS trail.

What months get the most visits to the top of Mt. Adams? I have only climbed it once, probably 25 years ago in mid to late August. We drove to Cold Springs, hiked with sleeping bags to Crescent Glacier by dusk, then went to Lunch Counter next day and up South Spur route. Maybe the road between Morrison Creek and Cold Springs is improved now; in the old days on my visit the road was pretty primitive and narrow.

Last year at the end of July I did the south side. THe ranger station said they had about 150 active permits that day. We did see a lot of people too, no doubt. Actually they were even permit-checking on the mountain around 8-9k feet.

I don't know how many people were up there on the 4th last year, but even with the road blocked, it was an impressive number. I didn't count the cars at the Morrison Creek trail, but I'd guess there were close to 50-75 people up there.