Mount Rainier
Trip Start
Jun 15, 2008
1
4
14
Trip End
Aug 16, 2008
Mount Rainier National Park,
Washington,
United States
Thursday, June 26, 2008
June 26 - Snow School. The guide company requires all climbers to attend a day of glacier travel instruction, so we headed up to about 7,000 feet and learned some glacier basics like rope travel, self arrest, and crampon use. This was a fun day of playing in the snow. We slid down the slopes and learned how to use our ice axes to stop ourselves in the event of a fall. Mom loves this part
Rainier from over 100 miles away
. Grandma too. June 27 - Hike to Camp Muir at 10,000 feet. This was an easy day that involved a five hour hike over snowfields up to a hut at Camp Muir (the launching point for the next day's climb). Great views from Camp Muir - Mt. Adams (12,000 feet), Mt. St. Helens (9,000 feet), and even all the way down to Mt. Hood in Oregon on a clear day. The guide company was like a military outfit, and rightfully so. Beginning at Camp Muir, their climbs run a tight schedule, and if you can't keep up, you won't make it. At 6:00 p.m., it was "time to get horizontal" in preparation for our midnight wake up. Eighteen climbers layed out sleeping bags in the hut and tried to get some rest. I'm pretty sure I slept zero minutes that night. I peed five times (from drinking too much water trying to hydrate), and kept asking myself, "Will I make it?".
June 28 - Summit Day. Midnight wake up. I've never seen more stars in my life, including a very clear view of the Milky Way. One hour to eat breakfast, hydrate, "squeeze one out" (as our guide phrased it), and get the crampons on. At 1:00 a.m., we roped up. My rope team was led by our lead guide Joel and three clients. I was in the third position. Ice axes in hand and headlamps on, we started out across the Cowlitz Glacier
Climbing up to Camp Muir
. The push to the top consists of five one to one and a half hour sections with four breaks. The second section was the toughest and included the climb up the Disappointment Cleaver, a section of rock that protrudes from the mountain and separates the Ingraham Glacier from the Emmons Glacier. The climb up the Cleaver is pretty steep (by regular folk standards) and requires a lot of energy and nerve, particularly in the middle of the night, in freezing cold. Several folks called it quits after the Disappointment Cleaver, not feeling like they had enough to make it up and down and apparently heeding our guides' advice, "Up is optional, down isn't. Make sure you have enough in you." After the Cleaver, we pushed up to the summit in another two to three hours. It was the hardest two hours of my life mentally and physically. I kept telling myself, "You've got ten more steps in you." When those ten ran out, I had to find ten more. This was also the point where the altitude started kicking in for me. Nevertheless, I made it! The summit crater is huge. At the top, we walked across the crater (it takes about twenty minutes) to the true summit at Columbia Crest. After taking some photos, we began the long journey back down. We hit Camp Muir between noon and one and finally got back to the parking lot at Paradise Visitors Center around three. One day, 4,400 feet up, 9,000 feet down, fourteen hours. Whew! I finished the day off with two hamburgers and two bags of chips. I would later found out that big day climbs like this can burn up to as much as 10,000 calories. Mount Rainier - check.
