Well the climb down turned out to be cake! We descended the chute leading into the top of the Wintun Glacier. It funnels down into a 50 ft. wide opening, and it's very steep. We started a glissade, but accelerated so fast that every five feet or so we had to arrest. We ended up doing a controlled arrest the whole way down - kind of glissading on our stomachs.

At the bottom of the chute we traversed across to the North, skirting the glacier, through thigh deep heavy wet snow looking for a route over the ridge. Finding nothing, we hopped into one of the existing glissade routes next to the ridge, and rode it on down to below the glacier. We managed to drop about two thousand feet in ten minutes or so! We crossed two more ridges, slid down one last snowfield, and were back at high camp less than an hour and a half after leaving the summit!

Original Comments

7 hours going up, 1-and-a-half hours coming down! That says it all!
-- SPoonen, 7/17/02

I wanna know if you guys slided down the hill on your BUTT!? :)) Did it get butt-freezing-cold? :))
-- stella, 7/17/02

BUTT of course! I had just put a new coating on my ski pants (Jagged Edge Mountain Gear... There is NO EQUAL!), so I didn't notice the cold or the wet at all.
-- Bud, 7/17/02