Mt Rainier Climb

Mt Rainier RMI Summit Climb

A little background on Mt Rainier.  It is the 3rd tallest mountain in the lower 48 states sitting at 14,410 feet.  It’s distinction is that it is also the most glaciated mountain in the lower 48 with 26 major glaciers.  Because of it’s glaciated nature, many world class climbers come to Mt. Rainier to train for a summit bid of Mt. Everest.  Mountain climbing on Mt Rainier is difficult, involving traversing the largest glaciers in the U.S. outside of Alaska.  Most climbers require two to three days to reach the summit, with a success rate of approximately 50%.  Climbing teams require experience in glacier travel, self-rescue, and wilderness travel.  About 8,000 to 13,000 people attempt the climb each year, about 90% via routes from Camp Muir on the southeast flank.

Preparation

I booked my 4 day guided climb through RMI the minute the schedules came out in November of 2017, was up at midnight clicking buttons and reserving what I had hoped was the “sweet spot” in the climbing season where I’d have the best opportunity to summit and have great weather.  I was able to get July 20th as a start date.  As a curiosity, the next morning I checked to see if I was silly staying up so late to book it at that time and turns out it wasn’t; in the morning all the July trips were reserved and many of the late June and early August trips were booked out.  I had gotten a great time it appeared.

After clicking “reserve” way back in November, the immediate anxiety of what I was planning to do set in.  I needed to train and lose some weight.  I was the odd guy in December lugging my backpack into the gym to climb the stair climbing, carrying way too much weight on day hikes or offering to carry more gear or food for back country snow trips.  I climbed Mt St Helens 4 times and climbed up to Camp Muir (bivy for the climb) 2 times with a full pack.  Not to mention running as many miles as I could squeeze in to ensure a good cardio base.  RMI sends you a “fit-to-climb” workout that I would do as well.  I wanted to make sure that if I didn’t summit, it wasn’t because of my lack of training.

Then all of a sudden, July 20th is here…shit, talk about nerves.  Day 1 through RMI is really just a very intense orientation.  You show up at basecamp with 8 other climbers and just stare at each other, well actually you introduce yourself but still.  We had 9 guys on our climbing party:  Myself, Andy, Chad, Rohit, Charles, Lucas, Stephen, Dave, and James.  

At 3pm, one of our mountain guides sits you down and begins to talk about expectations that they have of their clients and what you should expect from them.  They talk about the mountain and what route they have in plan.  As it turned out, when I’d gotten there we had heard that the route that we were intending to take, the climbing party that night didn’t summit because there was some ice fall on the route so the route was undetermined at the time and the guides on the upper mountain were trying to find a new route around.  As a paying client, this was frustrating; all this training, all this to possibly not even get a shot at summiting.  As it turned out, our guide told us this is a common occurrence as we get later in the summer, snow bridges melt out, crevasses open up and they just adjust the route accordingly, safely.  In the end, our guide had 3 route options if needed.

After a quick talk about expectations and what they expect the route up the mountain to be there is a gear check.  Prior to coming RMI gives you a list of everything they require you to bring and they look at all your stuff, if they feel it is insufficient they ask you to rent it.  After completing all the busy work, it’s a cold beer and burger at the Whittaker Mountaineering outdoor pub and back to the amazing VRBO to try to get some rest.   

After a fitful night of sleep after day 1, RMI has their clients go through mountain training school. They have you throw on your pack and we hiked just to the other side of  Panorama Point, a very heavily trafficked hike for tourist that come to Mt Rainier National Park.  Just to the east side of Panorama Point is a snow field where our guides had us practice basic mountain climbing/traveling techniques such as traveling roped into a group of climbers, how to self arrest properly if you were to slip and walking in your crampons.  Then we hike back down to Paradise parking lot, and it’s back for a beer and a burger for the night.  I struggled to sleep tonight because I was so anxious for the next day which was our day to head up the mountain.  I think I drifted off at around midnight and woke up to the sunshine at 5am.  I tried to lay there and doze back off, but no luck.  I was up and too wired to sleep any longer.  It was time to go climb a mountain.

The beginning of day 3 our guides have us meet in Ashford at 8am ready to go with packs packed.  They shuttle us up to Paradise at an elevation of 5400ft which is the starting point for us to climb.  Today we’re climbing up to Camp Muir that sits at 10,080 feet.  The shuttle dropped us off at Paradise and we started heading up to Camp Muir at 9:30am.  Again our guides are amazing and they tell you what to expect for this day and our climb up, for instance they told us we’ll take 4 breaks heading up and it’ll take us 4.5 to 5 hours which it did.  We arrived at Camp Muir roughly around 2-3pm and started to settle into RMI’s bunkhouse.  There is nothing special about the bunkhouse, they have sleeping pads, and 3 levels of bunks.  Pick a spot, be strategic as no one wants to crawl over someone to go pee when they are trying to rest.  Our guides provide us with hot water for dinner, I didn’t eat my lunch coming up the Muir Snow field so I ate my cold pizza…so my dehydrate smoked salmon pasta went un-eaten. They also provide melted snow for drinking water, they do a great job at keeping up with this and if anything encourage you to drink frequently and often.

Around 4pm the lead guides come to the bunkhouse and hold the climbing meeting.  The lead guides come in and talk to everyone, go over the route, talk about how it’s looking, some of the hazards etc.  Then they tell you to try and sleep and at the very least “Get horizontal”  Don’t be walking around.  6pm was the start of our “quiet time” I tried to sleep but couldn’t.  I just laid there listening to everyone else come in and out of the bunkhouse and move around.  I did get up around 9:30 to use the bathroom and was greeted with an amazing view.  Then back to the bunkhouse to try in vain to sleep. 

Our intended climbing route.  All the black dots are our resting points

After 5 hours of tossing and turning and not sleeping one bit, our guides came into the bunkhouse and “woke" us up, it was 11pm and we had an hour to get things ready.  They brought us in hot water for things like breakfast (oatmeal if you like it) or a hot beverage mmm coffee.  The hard part was now here, it was time to get the climbing harness on, don the helmet, turn on the headlamp, boots and crampons on…lets go stand on a mountain!  At 12am they want you out by your guide ready to “clip in”.  And then up you go!

The Climb from Camp Muir

 I started my climb with Jessie, a guide who was part French part American, she was our leader of our rope team made up of me, Charles from Virginia and Lucas from Olympia.  We were the first ready to go of about 6 rope teams, I was anxious but felt I’d done what I needed to do as far as training and mentally preparing myself for what was to come.  At 12am, all the rope teams were ready, half moon night with stars popping everywhere, we headed out from Camp Muir across the Cowlitz Glacier.  This is approximately 3/4 of a mile on a fairly flat walk that takes us to a scree slope that is called Cathedral Gap.

Cowlitz Glacier as it hugs Cathedral Gap

We had just started up the gap when Charles reports to Jessie, that he was nauseous/dizzy and felt disassociated.  She encouraged him to do some pressure breathing (a technique that they teach to take deep breaths to prevent such things).  Charles tried this multiple times, but it didn’t get any better but worse; he was stumbling and unable to keep good foot work.  30 minutes into our climb and one of the members of our rope team was calling it quits!  Yikes!!  Jessie radioed our lead guide (Steven) to report what was going on, she was instructed to hand myself and Lucas off to another rope team close to us on the gap, and stay with Charles, ultimately taking him back to Camp Muir.

I was handed off to a new rope team with members I had not trained with or spent any time with.  They were very accommodating introducing themselves immediately and we all fell right in together.  We made it to the top of Cathedral Gap and made it onto the Ingram Glacier and our first break of the night at Ingram Flats.   Once reaching the flats, I was passed back to my original team members and joined our lead guide Steven’s rope team.  This is where I’d stay for the remainder of the climb.  In my new rope team was Rohit, Andy and Chad with Steven the lead guide of the climb leading the way.  This meant I was the first to do everything…besides Steven of course. (Later I would find out that this was Steven's 80th summit of Mt. Rainier)

We left our first break and this next section our guides warned us had some areas that we needed to move fast through, we would have a ladder crossing…wait what??  Yep, there was a crevasse that had opened up and there was a small ladder with boards on it that we would be walking across.  The ladder was anchored into the snow and they had installed an anchored hand rope line to give one stability but the bottom line was that we were all roped in together and we were all each others safety net.  We left the Ingram flats and started up the mountain again.  We came to a section on the Ingram Glacier that had caved into a crevasse, basically it was a massive snow boulder wedged into the crack of the glacier…yep we’re going to stand on that thing.  There was a hand line that we were instructed to hold on to and make our way quickly and cautiously across.  I made my way through and was on the other side as Rohit, the climber behind me was walking through and I hear this “clink, clink, chenk” behind me… I turn around and Rohit had dropped his ice ax down into the crevasse…Shit.  I yell up to Steven that Rohit had dropped his ice ax into the the crevasse, and Steven responds “well don’t go get it, keep walking”.  Once our 5 man rope team passed through this section, Steven gave Rohit his ice ax to use until another rope team caught up and one of those guides had an extra that Rohit was able to use…with one caveat… “Don’t drop this one”.

The Ingram Glacier then runs into another steep scree field called the Disappointment Cleaver.  This is a scree and rock scramble up a very narrow and steep “hill”.  At the top of the cleaver is break number 2.  I guess the reason for naming this cleaver a "disappointment" is due to the fact many climbers reach the top of it only to recognize their inability to reach the summit.  And we lost another one of our group of 9 here, Dave.  He was nauseous and had vomited so the guides turned him around to head back down.  On the other team 2 additional people got turned around because they were not keeping the pace of the group.

After what seemed like the quickest break in the history of breaks we headed out from Disappointment Cleaver to our next stop High Break.  We had now crossed onto the Emmons Glacier.  This section too had a ladder crossing, similar to the ones in the photos below. 

The ladders are truly bottle necks in the climb.  The RMI and other guided services put these ladders in and know what you’re supposed to do to safely cross them.  There are independent climbers on the route who tend to hold everyone up behind them, which happened on multiple occasions.  So to cross these ladders you approach, grab the rope hand line and pull up which creates stability, these aren’t safety lines, they won’t protect you if you fall off the ladder, that’s what your rope team is for.  But we had an independent group in front of us who were “clipping” into the hand line thinking it was a safety line and either crawling across or butt scooching across these ladders.  Steven our lead guide had to yell at these people multiple times that what they were doing was not safe and told them how to cross it, but still they did what they wanted to do (this is why you go through a guide service to do shit like this, they are the professionals).  After crossing the next ladder it was switch back city up to 13,200 feet at High Break.  As we were sitting there the most spectacular sunrise I’ve ever seen occurred. 

We left High Break for the summit with clear skies and a sun cresting over the horizon.

This section was quite challenging, not for ladders or scree but just the vertical uphill.  Being tired, exhausted, knowing that the summit was so close is what keeps you putting one step in front of the other.

At 6:37am, on Monday July 23rd I rounded out at the top and stood on the summit of Mt. Rainier.

Signed the Mazama’s summit register

And texted Kristina that I was standing on top of Mt Rainier (I had 3G service, thanks US Cellular).  I was overcome with a burst emotions standing up there texting her that I was safe and standing on top of this iconic mountain.  I was so happy that everything worked in our climbing team’s favor this day, the weather was outstanding and pleased that I had done all the work in training for the past 9 months to give myself the best shot at doing this.  I was briefly standing at 14,410 feet.

What Goes Up Must Go Down

In Ed Viestur’s book No Short Cuts to the Top (read it, it’s good) he says that the summit is halfway of any climb.  That many people lose or discount this fundamental fact of climbing mountains.  That summit fever is so pervasive that climbers will burn through all their stores of energy to gain the summit, then they are so exhausted coming back down that they stumble and injury themselves.  So yes, I’m standing on top of Mt Rainier, elevation 14,410 feet, but I am only halfway through my climb.  I have 10-12 miles of decent back down to the parking lot where the RMI shuttle is waiting.

We left the summit of Rainier and were told that we are taking 2 breaks on the way down.  That we will be moving fast to get down before the snow bridges of the crevasses weaken.  The climb down was like a completely different environment than going up.  Instead of having a headlamp to guide the way, only illuminating a 20 foot diameter around you, you could now see all that you had walked through, around and over.  “Holy Shit!!  I walked over that”.  The ladders we crossed in the dead of night, now had more “pucker” factor to them.  What I’ve failed to mention earlier was that I have a very healthy fear of open heights, and now I’m crossing a ladder over a crevasse that is who knows how deep.  I say who knows because I didn’t dawdle or for that matter look down into them…I grabbed the hand line, looked across the ladder and walked across with determination.  Back at the High Break point our guides had left a long aluminum ladder in which they thought they may need for this crevassed snow bridge, they didn’t need to use it so what does Steven our lead guide do???…He picks it up and starts carrying it…what the f*ck??  So here we are heading down the mountain, the lead guy on our rope team is carrying a ladder over his shoulder and it’s just like he’s out for a stroll…with a ladder.

As we get a bit farther down there seems to be a cluster of climbers, it appeared that someone was injured.  As our guides are professional and have all kinds of training, Steven (still carrying his ladder by the way), checks in with them.  “Is everything ok?” “What’s going on?” “Do they need help?”.  I guess what the story was, that a climber had become hypothermic and couldn’t walk any more.  The people in his or her group had them in a sleeping bag, emergency blanket and all covered with layers and layers of warm clothing.  As it turned out, they called a rescue helicopter in for this person and was able to lower a basket down to air lift this person off the mountain.  Since this group did not need help, Steven and his ladder continued down the mountain.  He ended up leaving his ladder at around 12,500, basically carrying this ladder 1000 feet down the mountain for use when a crevasse opens up later in the season.

As we made our way back down, we crossed again the ice/snow plug on the Ingram Glacier and low and behold about 30 feet down, there was a beautiful ice ax just lying down there, Rohit’s ax looked so close that one would think an experienced guide or ice climber could repel down to get it, but as our guide said earlier “don’t go get it”, and it will be forever apart of the mountain.

We arrived back at Camp Muir at exactly 12pm, 12 hours from when we left to stand on top.  We had an hour to pack our non-essential gear we had left in the bunkhouse that was not necessary to climb the mountain then head down to Paradise parking lot; 4.8 miles from Camp Muir still, where the shuttle would whisk us away back to Ashford.  The day consisted of 21 miles for me, I had been awake by the time I got home and crawled into bed 41 hours and in that span of time from 12am in the morning of July 23rd had climbed 4500 feet from Camp Muir at 10,080 to the summit of Mt Rainier at 14,410 and then decended from 14,410 all the way to Paradise at 5400 ft.