We started for the summit at 6:00am the next morning. Low clouds that had hovered around 7,500 feet since the previous morning were still around. The high overcast from yesterday was gone. We took a leisurely pace to the summit, arriving at 10:30am– just as the overcast returned and engulfed the summit. The mist was freezing to our clothing and the moisture from our breath froze to our goggles, making visibility worse. The wind was about 30mph and the temperature 10°F; this would be fine for an overnight stay, but we could not see what weather might be developing so we decided to descend right away. May is too early to take chances with weather in the Cascades; perhaps I had nagging thoughts about almost exactly two years ago on Mount Baker.

One of the advantages of descending the Fuhrer Finger route derives from its disadvantage going up: we were able to make long glissades on the continuous moderate slopes. Even after hiking back up to Paradise from the Nisqually, we were back at Paradise in 5 hours with little effort.