Friday, June 13th.
All of the climbers meet at the Alpine Ascents office for gear check. This consists of the staff making sure that each climber has all the gear they need for a successful and safe summit. Plastic boots? Crampons? Ice axe? Soft shell jacket? Hard shell jacket? Puffy down jacket? Etc. ad nauseum....it takes alot of gear to climb a mountain! Get home from gear check around 9, time for dinner and a couple final items to pack, then straight to bed for a 4:00 AM wakeup. Everyone arrives at the office around 5:00, throw our bags in the trailer and jump in the van.
Saturday, June 14th
2.5 hours later and we're at the trailhead at the base of Mt. Rainier. Not that we saw the trail....it's still under 3 meters of snow. The sun is shining, everyone is excited, we make some clothing adjustments and drop some weight before the climb begins. We start walking slooooowly. First rule of mountaineering: it's a slog, not a sprint. Second rule: you have to walk like a mountaineer if you want to get to the top. This means the "rest-step" - basically a very efficient method of going uphill slowly. Picture yourself on a staircase. To move up a step, lift your left foot o
nto the next stair but don't put any weight on it. At the same time lock your right knee so that you're resting on your bones of your right leg, not engaging your muscles. Take a breath. Or two. Repeat X 10,000. Third rule of mountaineering: when you breathe, exhale as deeply as you can....this is the pressure breath. Now string it all together, and you've got a single file line of grown men walking lock-step like robots and breathing like rhythmic locomotives. Breath. Step. Breath. Step. Repeat X 10,000.Our first day's climb went from around 5500 feet elevation to 10,000 (around 5.5
hours hike), up what's known as the Muir snowfield. At the top is Rainier base camp 
(Camp Muir), a collection of huts and various tents that give temporary shelter to many of those attempting the summit. On the way up, we heard a rumbling from across the valley holding the Nisqually glacier, turning only to see a massive avalanche rolling down the mountain. The top couple feet of snow was only about a week old, and with the hot sun melting it down, surface slides like this one were in prime position. This one was cause by a couple of skiers coming down the mountain, but luckily everyone was ok.The view from Ca
mp Muir is spectacular. Looking south and east, you see Mt. St. Helen's and i
t's blown-out crater, Mt. Adams standing tall and symmetrical, sharp and pointy Mt. Hood, and beyond that Mt. Jefferson. That's besides all of the other smaller mountains (under 8000 feet), including the Tatoosh range and the southern Washington Cascades. To the north and west there's only one thing in sight: Rainier. After settling into our bunks in the hut and pounding a couple of liters of water, we headed over to
the cook tent where our guides were making burritos! A word about the guides. Our group was 8 climbers and 4 guides, and believe me
these guys were experts. The lead guide was on his 140th summit of Rainier. One of the others was Lhakba Gelu Sherpa (Google him), a Nepalese Sherpa and the holder of the speed record on Everest (11 hours from base camp to the peak). Oh and he's climbed Everest 13 times. Another is a former Marine and mountain guide for 17 years, and the last was a seasoned Washington climber (and former software developer!). These guys know everything about mountaineering, and great guys to hang out with to boot.After dinner and some
more water, we all curl up on the bunks in the Muir hut. 9 guys sleeping in a space the size of a college dorm room....you can imagine the symphony of snoring throughout the night. Sometime in the middle of the night I left the hut for the outhouse, and found a spectacular view outside. The moon was nearing full, the sky was clear and full of stars. Looking down the mountain you could see an ocean of clouds several thousand feet below us, with just the larger peaks around poking through like islands. The night was so clear and the moonlight so bright that you could see all around Rainier's snowfields and glaciers, glowing in a silhoutted blue. Sunday June 15th
We take a relaxed start to the morning sometime around 7, having breakfast and then doing some
repacking of bags. Late morning is our time to learn mountain skills. This means practicing our rest-step, leanring the duck-walk (just like what it sounds) and the cross-over step....all ways of being efficient and stable when walking on glaciers. Then the most important of all: self-arrest. Anyone traveling on glacier takes the risk of falling, and on a glacier any fall could turn into a very long slide, possibly into a crevasse or off a cliff. Self-arrest is the mountaineer's way of stopping such a slide. Whenever on a glacier, the mountaineer carries an ice axe in the uphill hand,. Were anything to happen, you fall on the axe (pointy side down), and dig your feet into the ice as deep as possible, forming a tripod of axe and two cramponed feet. Self-arrest is especially important when you're on harnssed together on a rope team. Suppose the lead climber falls into a crevasse...then it's the rope partners' job to self-arrest, suspending the fallen climber in the air and making sure they don't get pulled in themselves.
After skills training, we rope up and do our first bit of glacie
r travel, a quick hike underneath Cadaver gap up through Cathedral gap and onto the Ingraham glacier. Tents of our high camp are already waiting on the glacier, and the view is spectacular. Here we can see the Matterhorn-like spire of Little Tahoma peak directly below us, Glacier peak to the north, and off in the distance Mt. Baker's dome. The rest of the day is uneventful, and around 5 PM we crawl into our tents to get some rest before the summit push. Monday June 16th
We wake up around midnight, close up our packs, have some oatmeal and by 12:30 we're roped up and climbing with headlamps on. Visibility is not a problem, the clear sky and the reflections on the snow light up the mountain. Our route first crosses the Ingraham glacier, underneath an icefall and then a rockfall area affectionately termed a bowling alley. We move quietly and efficiently through the danger zone, making our way onto a steep ridge of rock and snow known as the Disappointment Cleaver. The Cleaver is steep ridge of seemingly interminable length, and the only thing one can do is keep putting one foot in front of the other and try not to look down.
First break was taken at the top of the Cleaver, but I can't say it helped me rest very much. The wind was gusting and the temperature had dropped, so the break consisted of jamming trail mix and energy bars into our mouths as we dug out parkas and gloves from our packs. 5 minutes later and we're moving again, now at around 12,000 feet. Another hour and half or so of plodding and we take high break, the last stop before the summit.
The last hour or so of the summit climb is the most dramatic . The air is getting thinner, your legs are getting tired and your body is starting to weaken. The dawn was rising in the distance, turning the mountain and the clouds below shades of pink, red, and orange before finally breaking out into daylight. The climbers having a tougher time begin to stumble, their gait becomes sloppy and the summit seems to get farther away. All you think about is putting one foot in front of the other, breathing deeply and making sure you keep yourself and your partners from tripping on the rope. At one point we stop and I pull out an energy gel to get a boost. As soon as it hits my mouth, I feel the nausea and empty my guts on the snow (puke #1). 20 seconds later and we're moving again.
Finally, we see the rocks of the summit ridge just above us. 45 minutes later, we're at the crater rim.
We walk down into the snow-filled crater, drop our packs and grab a bite. The crater is a big ring, several hundred meters across and rimmed by a ridge of exposed rock. From the low where we were, it's a 20 mi
nute walk straight across the crater, up beyond the steam vents to the summit register and the top of Columbia Crest, the true summit of Rainier. We're all so cross-eyed at the top that the best we can do is snap a few pictures, ogle at the 360 degree panorama and stumble back down into the crater. The view is amazing, and on a clear day like when we were there, you can see everything from the Olympic pensinula (Northwest tip of the U.S.), to the mountains on the Canadian border, Seattle and the Puget Sound, the plains of Eastern Washington, and the peaks of the Oregon Cascades. Back to our packs on the low side of the crater, another few granola bars and a liter of
water, plus subsequent puke for me (#2), and we're off on our way back down. Another rule of mountaineering: summits don't count unless you get back down safely too. Luckily the downhill is much less strenuous than the climb, altough extra special attention is paid to footwork since you're moving significantly faster. Also, now that the sun came out, we could see the steepness of the mountain below us, giving us very real motivation for remaining footfast. We get back to high camp (11,000 feet) around 10 AM, relax,
repack our bags and say goodbye to the Ingraham glacier,. From there it's a short descent to Camp Muir (10,000 feet), where we leave our helmets and harnesses and grab another bite. It's around 4,500 vertical feet down to the trailhead from Camp Muir, but with the added oxygen at the lower elevation, we were determined to make it a quick leg. Given the soft and slushy snow, we could practically jog down the snowfield with very little impact, even skiing in our boots on the steeper sections. 
We arrive back at Paradise trailhead around 2:00, all happy but tired, and glad to have a seat in the warm sun. After a a quick bit of pizza, most of us snooze our way back to Seattle in the van for rental gear drop-off. Then we go our separate ways, each one of us happy to be home but also missing the mountain in some way, I think. It's a different world up there in the mountains, and the tameness of day-to-day life really struck me upon returning.Next?
