July 13, 2003
Participants: Sheila Pyott, Jay Lane
Routes: Ascending Cooper Spur, descending Sunshine.
We left Cloud Cap at 8 am, a nice, leisurely hour. We were at least planning to ski, if we couldn't reach the summit, although we had crampons, ice axes, helmets, etc. We reached the snow line, above Tie-In Rock, on Cooper Spur, by noon. By this time, the mountain was socked in, so we napped for a couple of hours, hoping it would blow off. It continued to be socked in and we thought we'd climb a little higher and get in some more vertical, and ski down the Newton Glacier. No crevasse issues, there, so we didn't need a lot of visibility. But, no, we had caught "summit fever" and continued to climb up, catching glimpses of the summit now and then. We summitted at 5:20, coming up over the north cornice, using the cable. The conditions were definitely in our favor, the sun hadn't been beating down on the mountain all day, and the weather had cleared, complete with full moon.
From the summit, we hiked over to the Sunshine Route. Getting over there is a bit of a rock scramble, and exposed. The top of the Sunshine is beautiful and mild angle, very ski-able, although we continued to use crampons. Further down, we had to do a fair amount of down climbing, kicking steps, to cross the bergschrund. This was a bit nerve wracking, as it was steep, and involved some route finding to locate the snow bridge, which, at this time, is near Cathedral Ridge.
By 7:30, we had cleared the 'schrund. After a quick bite, we were on our skis and coming down Snow Dome. We had a little more crevasse navigation, cutting back over to Cooper Spur ridge line, although it was very manageable. We were at the cars by 9 pm, after a very full, and beautiful day.