Snacking Bear,
This brings to mind my Shasta climb in June. I tried glissading, and it was treacherous and awful. The reason: temperature.
The afternoon before, the ranger advised people to get up at 3 and get to the summit early. In hindsight, I am really clueless as to why. It was terrible advice! If I had gone an hour or two later, it would have been a completely different experience.
I got to the summit by 9 AM, and tried descending/glissading at 10 AM. Unfortunately, the temperatures were so cold that the glissade chute was almost solid ice. It was almost impossible to get any grip in the icy snow to keep my speed down. I inched my way down the chute, but it was a bad scene.
The day before, some hikers came down and told the guy camped next to me that he didn't even need an ice axe! They had climbed and descended later that day, and found glissading slow. What a difference a few hours make!!!!
Note that on Whitney, this accident occurred pretty early in the morning -- a similar situation. The glissade groove was more of a luge track! No way anyone could slow down without the ice axe being used aggressively.
