Here’s a little account of the Mt. Rainier trip:
On Friday night I drove over to Mt. Rainier for the fourth time in the past four years, the previous three being to ride or volunteer for RAMROD. This year the purpose was crevasse rescue training, the final event of 2010 Mountain School with the Spokane Mountaineers. It was a bluebird weekend at Rainier, not a cloud in the sky as the 40 some students and instructors met at the Paradise parking lot and hiked up toward the Nisqually glacier. We were hoping to find an open crevasse to practice in but there has been so much fresh snow this spring that the usual chasms are still covered over, so we improvised on some steep slopes instead.
Some of us had been planning to climb Rainier starting on Sunday. You may have read in the paper about recent avalanches there and the climbers who were swept down the mountain just last week. One climber hasn’t been found yet and is presumed dead. This all happened on the Ingraham Direct route, which is the same one our permit was for. So, there was some tentativeness in our plans and we decided to meet at the climbing ranger’s office on Saturday afternoon and get the latest weather and snow condition report and make a decision about what to do. The report from the climbing ranger was that conditions on the Camp Muir side of the mountain were still marginal and guides were not taking their clients past Camp Muir. However, on the northeast side of the mountain, the approach from Camp Schurman has had excellent snow conditions and no avalanche concerns at all. We were able to get our permit changed and on Sunday morning we drove over to White River campground and set out up the trail toward Camp Schurman.
It took us seven hours to hike from White River at 4,600’ to Camp Schurman at 9,600’. The trail had been washed out and the park service had makeshift detours marked with tape but it’s a semi-bushwhack with multiple creek crossings, lots of log hopping and lite-stepping over tenuous snow bridges. My pack weighed 45 pounds; I’d trim that in half for the summit push. Once above the tree line the warm temperature softened the snow, in some places like slogging through two feet of mashed potatoes. Bill Neve and I reached high camp at 6pm and set up our tent in a well dug snow pit mostly out of the wind. Bill is a fellow cyclist from Walla Walla who happily rides his mid-nineties Klein. He describes his job as a “Water Rights Consultant” but his original job title was “Watermaster.” With the establishment of the grape in the Walla Walla area, Bill has applied himself to the messianic avocation of turning water into wine!
The other two members of our rope team, Shawn Metts and Justin Wuest would arrive at high camp early Monday morning. Justin was in Boise on Saturday doing a half ironman. Then he flew to Seattle and got a ride to White River to meet Shawn. These two young guys are both civil engineers in Coeur d’Alene. Justin works for Idaho DOT so I need to have some conversations with him about where to put rumble strips. As a triathlete I’m pretty sure he’ll have an open ear.
Monday was an aclimatazation day for all of us so we didn’t work too hard. The lead climbing ranger at Camp Schuman is David Gottlieb who has been in that position since 1995. He gives you a personal greeting when you arrive at high camp, explains the nuts/bolts & etiquette of life on that snow ledge and provides the latest report on weather and conditions for a climb. Our plan was to go to bed at 6pm Monday and then get up at midnight if the weather seemed acceptable. David said that the wind blows all the time but if it’s strong enough to move you around physically you might want to go back to bed and check it again an hour later.
At midnight the wind was howling and buffeting the tents pretty hard. Justin yelled across to Bill & I to ask what we thought. I stuck my head outside the tent and was struck by the most blazing display of stars I’ve ever seen, the clouds were all below us. I put on my down booties and walked over toward the ranger hut to the outhouse. I figured if I could make it there and back without getting blown off the mountain then we should be good to go. Down the hill I saw headlamps from the whole row of tents indicating that two other groups were getting ready to climb. One of these groups was guided and that’s usually a good indicator of conditions. If the guides are taking their clients up it’s probably reasonable to give it a shot too.
The guide and three clients on a rope team were off first at about 1am. An independent three man team left about 20 minutes later followed by our four man team at 1:45. The entire Emmons/Winthrop route is visible from camp so it is easy to see the train of evenly spaced headlamps steadily making their way up the mountain in the dark. The wind continued to blow but only one time did it gust so strong that we all instinctively stopped, drove our ice axes deep into the snow and held on with both hands until it dialed off a bit. Mostly it’s the lungs that are the limiting factor with regard to uphill progress. The lungs get you up the mountain, the quads get you back down again. On both counts cycling does well as a training method as long as you throw in a bit of running and some upper body resistance training. Long bike rides on hills are the best!
At 4am it started getting light and the prospect of sunrise is eagerly anticipated after a cold, dark & windy night. Each of us had brought 3 liters of water and enough finger food for the projected 7 hours to the top and 3.5 hours back to high camp. Most of the food is stuffed in pockets so it can be readily accessible without having to stop and take off the pack. Gel worked great. I also had PowerBars which was a mistake on this trip. I know they get hard in the cold but on past climbs I’ve put them in pockets next to my leg to keep them soft. It was way too cold on this trip, they were like cement, worthless. Twix bars worked well. I had a whole bag of snack sized ones that were small enough to pop in your mouth and chew while frozen.
It’s about 5,000’ from Camp Schurman to the top and I knew we were getting close when we crossed around the right side of the bergschrund (upper most crevasse in the glacier) and the edge of the summit crater came into view. The snow gave way to spots of sheet ice and I was glad to have crampons on. The teams that left before us were now heading back down and when we passed I noticed they were all wearing down parkas and goggles. Someone encouraged us that we were almost there but added, “It’s 5 degrees and winds 35-45mph. That explains why they were already on the way down!
Peering over the edge into the summit crater is a pretty neat experience, I’ve never been on top of a volcano before (It doesn’t sound like a good idea does it! Especially with active steam vents churning out clouds of vapor). Anyway, we didn’t tarry long in those conditions either. Unroped, took the short walk over to Columbia Crest at 14,410’, snapped a few celebratory shots and started back down like the two teams before us.
When we made it back to Camp Schurman everyone was pretty tired and needed to rehydrate and eat something hot. Although our permit gave us until Wednesday the consensus was to pack up after lunch and go all the way out to White River & home. We reached the cars at 7:30pm. Shawn had bought a sixpack of Rainier beer to celebrate with but he was the only one that could partake since the rest of us were driving. I think it was about 4am Wednesday when I got back to Clarkston.
At home Clare asked me, “So, do you cross this one off the bucket list, or is there going to be another mountain?”
