The Milk – Raven glacier linkup is a nice little lollipop loop that connects the Milk and Raven glaciers in the Girdwood valley. This loop usually goes pretty early in the season and is a great reminder of how rusty your touring and glacier travel skills have gotten over the summer. The first week of October was ridiculously rainy in Girdwood so we figured that probably meant it had been ridiculously snowy up high Not sure of how low the snowline actually got, we (Ryan, Eric, and Julie) picked the next sunny day and drove down to Girdwood to take our skis for a walk.
We followed the standard crow pass trail for a couple miles until hanging a right, heading up a gulley to hit the saddle between Jewel Mountain and Barnes Mountain.
The last time we were back here we skinned up from the car. It was definitely a different story this time. We got to the saddle and dropped down onto the moraine off Milk Glacier still in our hiking shoes.
We ended up keeping our shoes on for awhile even after we got onto the glacier since it was so bare at the toe. Once we started to creep towards the snowline and got a few inches of snow under our feet we transitioned to skis and roped up.
Once we finally had skis on our feet we made pretty fast progress upward. It looked like there was a pretty good route straight up the middle, so hey lets head up the middle!
After a little probing we got over the rollover and were on top of the Milk Glacier. We had to stop and snap some pics of this gaper that we cruised by!
Once we got to the top of the Milk Glacier, we were able to get a good view of the Raven Glacier. It looked like a gosh darn jigsaw puzzle. Seemed like a good opportunity to take a little lunch break and decide what the move was! On the other hand, the Raven headwall was filled in nicely! Turns out the snow line for the majority of the last week was just a little higher than we thought.
We decided to continue on with the linkup, figuring we could probably pick our way through the Raven. We even got a few low angle turns in dropping down onto the Raven, and hey that’s what its all about isn’t it?
The actual skiing didn’t last too long, but they were our first turns of the year and we were all pretty psyched! Soon enough we were roped up with our skins on, probing our way through a minefield.
You can sort of see the zig and zag required in this next pic.
Pretty dicey skiing but we eventually made it off the glacier and back to Crow Pass. It is fun to do things that require every ounce of concentration you have. We strapped our skis back on our packs and trudged on out of there. Nice work team!
