Chris, Matt and I set off on a two day attempt to summit Rainier via Fuhrer Finger (named after the Swiss American first ascensionist, Hans Fuhrer) — a long, steep but reasonably wide couloir, which is considered one of the classic ski routes down the mountain. We didn't summit, turning around at about 12700 feet (the summit is at 14411) on upper Nisqually Glacier. That does mean that we skied the Finger, which is easily the best ski line I have ever skied. (The pictures here are only from the first day of our outing, as on the second day I was too focused on the climbing and the skiing to bother fiddling with the camera.)

I generated the topomap with our route, except the descent on that map ends in the middle of the lower Nisqually Glacier – that's where the lithuim batteries in my GPS unit unit died after two days of hard work.