If there is any area that I would like to think of as my home mountain it would be Mount Rainier and its lower slopes. Over the years I’ve been fortunate to tour with my friend who goes by the nickname Boot and is one of my favorite touring partners. Our zone is the White River of the NE side of the park.

I’ve toured in this area for almost a decade and I have never seen another person out here during the winter. It is something special.

Over the next 7 hours Boot and I skinned up almost 6,000 vertical feet of chin deep pow on the Emmons Glacier which I prefer in the winter compared to the Glacier Basin summer trail.

It’s far more direct and for the most part the crevasses are filled in.

Enjoy the skin track porn.

If you’ve never made it to Steamboat Prow it is such an amazing place at 10,000 feet and half way up Rainier.

But the best part is that it allows access to the Interglacier which is almost a 5,000 foot run of sheltered NE slopes.

And sometimes it delivers.

I ran my GoPro the whole time and when I stopped it at the bottom it was running for two minutes. I laughed to myself realizing I did 8 hours of hard work for 2 minutes of ecstasy. Was it worth it? YES!!