What I Saw of Mt. Rainier

It has been on my bucket list, climbing Mt. Rainier. I was close to the summit 33 years ago, but one of my partners got altitude sickness and we went down, only a few hundred feet below the top. So that near miss has stuck in my craw ever since, and is brought to mind every time I see the mountain, which is fairly often. An opportunity came up, when a colleague of mine, near my age, and an avid climber/hiker/skier/rafter, mentioned he had a reservation for Rainier during the full moon the first week of August. Was I interested? Well, yes. Hell, yes. I trained (a little) carrying my 65# backpack up and down some steep trails here in Anacortes. I ran (a little) a flat 4-mile route at sea level, once a week in reality, but occasionally 3 times in a given week. And I did kettlebell swings nearly daily. Was I trained enough? Not really. The big week arrived, and I had assembled all my gear. My pack was vintage from 1985, carried during my Nepal trip, as were my sleeping bag, crampons, and harness. My ice axe was the same from my original effort in 1979. Ditto my helmet. Everything else was relatively new, at least from the last decade. I met my partners, all of whom work at my hospital, pitched packs and gear into a pickup truck, and off we went. We made the obligatory stop at REI Seattle, and picked up the few last-minute items we needed, and made our way to Ashford, WA, where a bunkhouse room awaited us. We had a fitful night's sleep, and got up early to drive to Paradise, our jumping off point. We unloaded and re-sorted a mountain of ropes, packs, pads, stoves, food, sleeping bags, parkas, lights, tents, axes, snow pickets, carabiners, hydration packs, boots, crampons, and various personal items. All went into packs or pockets, and we saddled up and moved out. The first day was from Paradise Lodge, the end of the road at 5420 feet, to Muir Camp, at 10,000 feet. That was a mere 4 miles, first winding through alpine meadows with astounding varieties of flowers in full bloom, then mostly on mashed-potatoey snow on the Muir Snowfield. I was completely blown away by how tired I became doing that. Granted, it was at altitude, I am old and relatively unconditioned, and I was carrying 65 pounds, but still, that was strenuous, and beyond. We made a camp among the tents at Muir, made a hot meal of semi-instant soup and dehydrated dinners, and hit the sleeping bags. I had forgotten how much I like to sleep on snow. Really. You may secretly suspect me of sarcasm, but no, I really like to sleep on snow. The original plan was to jump up at midnight, and begin climbing by headlight, while the snow was firm and the snow bridges over the crevasses were less likely to fail. But my crampy legs and overall fatigue let me know that was a bad plan. Instead, we slept in, and then took a walk across the top of the Cowlitz Glacier, to practice arrests and extractions from theoretical crevasses. We were surrounded by entirely real crevasses, so the theory did not require much imagination. We returned to camp, made more hot rehydrated meals and pre-hydrated as much as possible for the climb, and retired early. A chilly, calm 11:45 PM arrived, and we heated water for cocoa and oatmeal, and girded our loins for the battle ahead. The gear I wore for the anticipated cold and winds, and for passage over ice, rock and snow, included a poly baclava and fiberglass helmet over that, a headlamp attached to the helmet, a poly long-john shirt and pants, hard shell poly pants, a fuzzy vest, and a gore-tex jacket. On my feet I wore silk liner socks, heavy wool over socks, and stiff plastic mountain boots, with knee high gaiters, and crampons. On my hands were two layer climbing gloves. A climbing harness and chest harness completed the outfit. We picked up our packs, roped up in two teams of two, and started off. The moon was full, and the sky clear, so headlights were needed only in the shaded parts, but there were long stretches in the shadows, so we bobbed along, following the path lit by the little circles we threw just ahead, and seeing not much else. Up ahead and behind us on the route were strings of fireflies, similarly laboring along in their own little circles. Occasionally we would pass a team off to the side, taking a rest break, and taking in pep talks from their professional guides. Occasionally faster teams would approach from behind, and we would step aside, and let them pass. We crossed the Cowlitz Glacier, where we had practiced the day before, scrambled through loose rock through Cathedral Gap and past Cathedral Rock, on to the Ingraham Glacier. This area is relatively flat, but has many deep crevasses, so the route changes frequently as chasms open up in the middle of the route, and ways around have to be found. We picked our way across in the bright moonlight, through bizarrely tortured ice formations, and over yawning dark cravasses, and reached the bottom of the Disappointment Cleaver. Here the route was shadowed from the moon, and transitioned to crumbling glacial till and larger rocks. A path winding upwards seemed endless, and the rough irregular rocks were very challenging in crampons, threatening to pitch me in any direction, as points caught unexpectedly on jutting rocks. A sharp wind came up, mostly blowing in our faces from the top of the mountain, and chilling us instantly if we stopped. It was now 04:00, and we could begin to see the faintest glimmer of daylight to the east, and Yakima glowing off in the distance. I was feeling very very tired, and I guess my slow pace alerted leader Don that I was flagging. I drank some water, and tried to eat an energy bar, but it was gagging me to try to chew and swallow. He asked if I thought I could make it, and I said "I don't know." He told me, "If you can just keep putting one foot ahead of the other, you can make it." I focused on that, and I said I would not turn back in the dark. If we could just get back on the snow, I thought we could make better progress. The rocks and my crampons were wearing me out. We moved over to the side of the Cleaver, and started up on snow, and I felt much better. I could pick my footfalls where I wanted them, had firm contact with the ground, and could just concentrate on putting one foot in front of the other. My crampons were now my friends, instead of trying to kill me. We progressed. The sun came up at about 05:00, and the headlamps went out, and sunglasses went on. The wind blew stronger and colder. We topped out of the Cleaver and continued long switchbacks up the Ingraham Glacier. I paused intermittently for the view, but was literally too focused on just walking to take off a glove, unzip a pocket and remove a camera, turn it on, point and shoot, and then re-pack the thing. So I just motored on, concentrating on putting one foot in front of the other. I thought of my friends John Kerman and Darol Joseff, who had accompanied me here 30-odd years ago. I thought of my daughter, Hannah, an ultramarathon runner, who had just completed Badwater earlier in the month. Her dictum of stopping only for lightning strike or shark attack below the waist was firmly in mind. Each long diagonal up the slope revealed another long traverse, although the pitch seemed a little less severe. But there was no sign of the top, just endless white slopes curving away. The sun made the snow softer, and therefore harder to walk on. It also made me steam up with all the effort. The wind punished anyone who stopped, and the sun tortured us on the move. Suddenly, the slope flattened out, and we clambered up over the lip of the crater, onto a several acre plateau, literally dead-flat, as if it were a frozen lake. Teams were taking pictures, backs to the wind, which was now 40 plus miles per hour, and cold. We dropped our packs, and skipped up the 300 yard path to the actual summit, another hundred feet or so higher, and it was done. Clouds blew in and out, giving glimpses of the world on the other side, but mostly there was cloud. It had been clear a few hours earlier, but not now. Wolfgang scattered some of his father's ashes at the summit, we took a few pictures, and we turned back to begin the descent. Now I got the full view of what we had just climbed in the dark, and I must say, I am glad I hadn't seen the full picture on the way up. Sometimes it is better not to know… We launched down the same path, passing climbers on the way up and offering encouragement. The snow became really mushy and treacherous, giving way underfoot, and causing skidding glissades when none was desired or intended. I arrested 4 or 5 slides of this sort with my ice axe, but did not slide out of the route, nor put any tension on the rope. We arrived rapidly back at the top of the Cleaver, and took a rest break, fueled up, and removed our crampons. I was feeling better at the lower altitude, and felt I still had the energy to descend safely, but with no reserve in the tank. I would be landing on bingo fuel, vapors only. With crampons off, the rock scramble down was a welcome break, and we picked our way down the path, making fairly rapid progress. We transitioned onto the Ingraham Glacier again, and kicked mushy steps in the snow, winding through an amazing ice-scape of jumbled icefall, huge crevasses curving away, transitioning from white to blue-green to indigo as they carved out of view. The sun was brutal, making mashed potatoes of the entire slope, and loosening rocks above, causing occasional rockfalls. We scrambled over mixed rock and gravel back through Cathedral Gap, and across the flat top of the Cowlitz Glacier again, and arrived at camp. We dropped packs, unhitched our ropes, and got out of our damp, malodorous clothing. Our day was far from done, as we had to strike the tents and pack it all up in the big packs, and head out for Paradise. That seemed impossible to me, but there was really no choice. I slept for an hour, hydrated and ate some gorp, and we saddled up again. Here, the team were heroes, because they saw I was beyond tired, and they gave me a lighter load, and took my big pack. We said good-bye to our tent neighborhood, and launched back down the Muir Snowfield for the four mile hike back. That went a lot faster and easier down than up, and we were back at Paradise in an hour and a half, sliding down stretches on our bottoms in the soft snow, and plunge-stepping the rest. The return to green trees and fields of wildflowers was gratifying. It was misty-cloudy below, and a great relief from the broiling we received up above. Deer grazed along the path, unconcerned by passers by, and large golden marmots stared at us without moving. We arrived back at the paved path, which was actually painful to walk on, and I shuffled the last mile to the parking lot. We rejoined the world of fast food-eating latte-drinking car-driving gawkers, and motored off to a well earned Mexican Restaurant meal, and then back to our original meeting point. It was done. Thanks are due to Don Slack, a hiking/climbing machine, who set this up and made it possible. His experience with ice and snow and rope work was invaluable, as was his quiet confidence we could get it done. The "Boys", Wolfgang Stufflebeam and Austin Kinney, were strong climbers, and very attentive and helpful in carrying some of my load. This old dog couldn't have made it without their help, and they were good company in any event. So thanks, Team Legacy, and congratulations on a hard-earned summit you can be proud to have achieved.