12 miles of hiking • 6750' elevation gain • 3 nights
I have not climbed Adams since sometime in the 1990's so when a friend from Gresham invited me to climb with him and his 2 college age kids I could not pass it up. One thing I forgot though was how bloody far away it is from my house ..... almost 6 hours, and as we were meeting at the TH Monday morning @ 10:30 I decided to head down Sunday afternoon and camp at the TH which did have some nice camp sites and clean privy's. Heading out on Monday morning we arrived at the Lunch Counter & camped at a bit over 9000'. Got up the next morning at 4:30AM and was heading up around 5. Snow conditions were perfect and we arrived at Pikers Peak in a few hours. After Pikers Peak I could not believe how little snow was present. From there we discarded the Crampons and just booted our way to the summit where the old sulfur mine was clearly visible. We spend a couple of hours at the top as the temps were very mild and the winds were surprisingly non existent. The hazy conditions did unfortunately limit the views. The decent was mostly glissading and we were back down at camp within a couple hours. Our climbing partners from Gresham packed up and headed down while we spent another night at the Lunch Counter drinking the beers we had lugged up from the TH. Next morning packed up and were back at the TH by 10:30AM and all ready for the LONG drive back home.
