8 posts tagged “mount rainier”

Yes, I'm still alive.

I suppose most of you already knew that, but it occurred to me that reading that last post and then not seeing another post for so long might lead someone to think that I'd fallen off the mountain or something.

No, we didn't fall off the mountain.  But neither did we make the summit.  We turned back at 13,200' because of fatigue and the possibility of worsening weather.  We probably could have summited, but if the weather had worsened it would have jeopardized our descent considering how tired we already were.  So we made the difficult but always correct choice, and we turned around to try another day.

And for the record, I did attempt to post blog entries from the mountain.  On the evening of the first day, at 11,500' on the Ingraham Glacier, I tried to post a short update from our tent.  My phone indicated that there were two bars of digital service, but it was roaming service.  I told it to go ahead and connect anyway, but it failed.  Then, a while later, I made another attempt when the phone had one bar of digital Sprint service.  Same result:  couldn't make the connection.  I'll try this again next year when we tackle the Emmons route, because I think we may get a better signal on that side of the mountain.  But I wouldn't hold out much hope of getting a live blog entry from Mt. Rainier without satellite service at this point.  In any case, here is what I would have posted:

Ingraham
At the flats.  Very tired.  Am feeling the altitude but made decent time today.  Hope the weather holds out.  More from the summit hopefully.  8/11/2007 18:33.

So there you have it.  Sadly, there has been no mountaineering activity since then.  Honestly, I have to admit at this point that I burned myself out on climbing this summer.  It will be nice to take it a little easier in the "off-season" and focus on lots of other things going on in my life right now...

So Vince convinced me to try to post updates from Rainier this weekend from my phone. Here is the first test of the technology that should hopefully enable that to happen. With luck, the next post will be from high camp on the Ingraham Flats... more later...

Attempted Mount Rainier (14,410' - 4392m) on July 1, but had to turn around at 12,500' due to avalanche-prone snow conditions on the traverse above the Disappointment Cleaver.

I was on a team of 9 climbers, including 5 teammates from the BoeAlps class and 4 instructors from that class.  (Though they were instructors in class, we climbed as "equals" on the team, sharing responsibilities and gear - quite a difference from last year's climb when we were shepherded up the mountain by professional guides.)  As I've said before, the trip last year was but a taste of the possibilities, and taking the class this Spring was the first real step in opening up those possibilities.  Attempting Rainier again, this time without guides, would be another step.

From the beginning, though, we ran into some interesting challenges:  first, we had intended to try the Emmons Glacier route to change things up a little for myself and K, who had done the DC route last year with RMI.  This changed when we were unable to secure an advance reservation for the Emmons, and we decided to go for the DC instead to ensure that our party of 9 would have a camping reservation.  Even then, we were relegated to the Muir Snowfield, with Camp Muir and the Ingraham Flats both being booked in terms of advance reservations.  The happy "ending" to this was that we were able to get a spot at the Flats after all when F showed up the night before and secured one of the "day-of" spots for us.

Anyway, it seemed the instructors were cursed on this trip from the beginning:  G showed up with a nice cold going and said that he would take it step by step...  By 8200' on the snowfield D was feeling it badly and decided to turn around.  He felt alright to make the descent down to the parking lot by himself, but we sent a radio with him and checked in on him until he was safe.  F then started feeling down at Camp Muir (10,080'), and finally M had had it by the time we reached the Flats and struck camp.  M and F stayed at camp, but to my surprise G soldiered on, making it two teams of 3 on the ropes at 1 AM.

Now we'd negotiated some crevasses in class, especially on Mt. Baker.  And after class, we were again up on a glacier when we summited Colchuck.  But Mt. Rainier really is a different beast.  These crevasses were huge, house-eating numbers...  really not something you want to mess with.  And there were quite a number of them.  With the traffic going up the mountain that night (there were probably 20 rope teams and a handful of non-roped people) we decided to take it easy and just hang out behind the group in front of us, which was a guided group with IMG, I think.  In any case, others were not as patient and there were some people making some pretty ill-advised passes in some pretty gnarly areas of crevassed terrain.  All I have to say is:  this is the DC route and it's a nice summer weekend...  you'd better be in the right mindset (read:  patient and cooperative) or else it's going to be a frustrating, possibly dangerous night.

Regardless, we made it up the Ingraham and onto a series of fixed lines to gain the Disappointment Cleaver itself.  Again, lots of patience here as everyone clipped and unclipped past the anchors...  Whereas last time I had just kind of accepted whatever the guides told me to do, this time I found myself much more acutely aware of my surroundings.  We passed some pretty tense moments as we stood under some pretty rockfall-prone areas.  I can see why "speed is safety" in these areas, and I was somewhat thankful that I was too tired/ignorant last year to know any better.  This year, I felt I had a much deeper appreciation for the objective hazards around me.

The good news was that most of the DC was still snow covered, and we made only a few minor traverses across rock.  I'm sure M appreciated this, since I'd borrowed his crampons to use with my light mountaineering boots.  (I opted for the light boots instead of the plastics to save weight given that we expected the weather to be good.)  By the time we hit the top of the cleaver, we were still feeling pretty good.  Certainly a hell of a lot better than I felt by that point in the climb last year.

We stopped for a short break (it was very, very cold and windy) before heading up again, preparing to traverse over to the Emmons shoulder.  The day before, we had heard reports from descending parties that the freshly fallen snow (it had snowed on Thursday and Friday) was creating dangerous conditions here in terms of avalanche danger.  There was a visible overhang, and we were still crunching through a hard top layer onto a soft layer even on the Cleaver.  It was not looking promising, but we headed up a little ways, with a guided team ahead of us, to see for ourselves.

No sooner had I been belayed across a snow bridge and belayed J over to me did the guided teams call it.  So there we were, on this dicey snow bridge across a gaping crevasse, when we made the call to turn around.  If IMG wasn't going up, we sure as heck weren't going to question their judgment.  By turning around, we managed to make it into Mike Gauthier's blog (the head climbing ranger at Mount Rainier National Park) - and not as casualties - yay!  (Scroll down to the July 1 report and click on the picture...  from the left edge, you can see J's red helmet, and K getting something out of his pack, who were on my rope, and then G, M, and L facing us on their rope team.  In short, everyone but me!)

The descent was relatively painless, though somewhere along the way I got a nice crispy sunburn all over my face and scalp, which I'm just now getting over.  I had switched to a less oily sunscreen from Nivea which claimed to be SPF 50, but I'm not going to use that anymore, at least not on a mountain.  I ended up ordering up a different sunscreen, made by a small company in NH, which I intend to try out.  If it works out I'll post a review.

Anyway, so Rainier remains elusive this year.  The good news was that we didn't summit because of conditions, not because of conditioning.  In fact, we all felt great up there, especially J, who was on a mission after being thwarted last year.  Unfortunately, we'll have to make another attempt to get her there, but this was a great trip in that we all felt that we would have made it easily from that point had the conditions been good.

Thanks to a tenacious team and cooperative weather, I bagged the first 4-fer of my climbing career on Saturday.  Our team reached the summits of Plummer Peak (6370'), Denman Peak (6006'), Pinnacle Peak (6562'), and The Castle (6440'), starting at 7:30 from the Narada Falls parking lot, and returning there some 10 hours later.  (GPS Track)

The day started with Pinnacle and The Castle as our ostensible goals, but by 9:30 we had already reached the col between Pinnacle and Plummer, so most of the team went for the quick hike over to Plummer and Denman while the lead instructor took a small team over to Pinnacle to set up ropes and protection for the scramble.  We were treated to spectacular views of Mt. Rainier throughout the morning.  It was the first time I'd seen the great mountain up close since the last Camp Muir trip in September.

Coming into the national park that morning gave us the first look at the destruction of the storms last year:  the Sunshine Point campground was indeed gone, as we'd read.  The main parking lot area and many campsites were now gone, replaced by thin air with rushing water underneath.  The entire embankment had collapsed.  Past the Kautz Creek, the road was brand new, along with a brand new bridge over the new culverts where the Kautz had decided to turn.  Lots of downed trees throughout the park as well, but once we got off on foot, there wasn't much to see since most of our route was under snow which had fallen since the storms.  It allowed us to remember that some things do endure.

Anyhow, the going was a little rough at first going over to Plummer since we were now on south facing snow, which had been warmed to a mush.  The step kicking became a chore compared to the edging on hard icy stuff on the way in.  We managed to make the summit in good time, though, and then kicked it down to the lower summit of Denman before traversing back to the col.  We were going to leave our packs, but the lead instructor wouldn't let us...  hah.  Slowed us down a little, but in the end we're stronger for it.  Or something...

From the col we hiked it up across some rock and snow to the final scramble up to the summit of Pinnacle.  There, we found a nice rope ready for us, and we prussiked up the Class 4 rock and over to the summit.  When I got there, we could still see Rainier, but the clouds had been moving in all morning, and by the time we got everyone on top for the group photo, all we could see was white.  In fact, I have photos taken four minutes apart where Rainier is only partially obscured in the first to being completely white in the second.  Mountain weather changes fast.

We quickly made our way back down on an arm rappel and then over to the ropes that another team had set up for the Class 5 rock climb up to The Castle.  I belayed one of our instructors up on a mechanical belay before he and another instructor set up the rope for two hip belays at a time from the top.  In this way, we all got up to the summit of The Castle.  Unfortunately, the previous team had chosen an iffy rappel, and we spent quite a bit of cold time at the top as we moved the rappel ropes over to another location.  The only hiccup of the day came when one of our instructors was struck in the head by falling rock without warning, knocked lose by the last instructor to come down the rappel.  Her helmet suffered a nice crack, but after a really scary few moments, she was alright.

We all made our way down (this time on a mechanical rappel) and then glissaded most of the way back to the road and parking lot.  This was a great trip from the standpoint of bagging peaks, certainly, but I think what really stands out in my mind is how we brought so many skills together:  snow hiking techniques on hard and soft snow, mechanical and hip belays, the arm and mechanical rappels, scrambling on rock, climbing on rock, navigating...  and of course just having a great time out there.

Hiked to Camp Muir (10,080') again on Saturday, as the final training hike before my Mt. Rainier summit attempt.  [GPS Track, ascent in red, descent in green]

With the rest of the team taking the weekend off with other obligations, J and I made the ascent in a speed push, with full packs.  We made it from the lower "day-use" parking lot below the Jackson Visitor Center to Camp Muir (a vertical gain of over 4800') in 3 hours, 55 minutes.  On the ascent, we stopped only twice:  once at Pebble Creek (7200') to have a bite to eat and then at about 9000' on the snowfield to catch our breath and take a break before making the final push.

Since this was the third time I'd made this ascent, and the second time for J, we were pretty confident and knew how to pace ourselves.  The weather was absolutely gorgeous, very similar to the first ascent with perfectly clear skies and the temperature in the 70's and 80's back near sea level.  Up at Paradise it was about 60, and at Muir it was a little chillier, maybe 50.  But I never even put on my fleece the whole way up and down.  I was in my shorts and long-sleeve base layer all the way.  Sun protection was an issue again, and I made sure to slather the stuff on.  Even so, I got the ridiculous "mountaineer" tanlines to show for it.  No burns this time for me, thank goodness.

Although this was beginning to be old hat, this climb was not without its challenges.  The biggest one, for me, was that in my idiocy I'd forgotten to bring my contact lenses!  So I had a choice of wearing my goggles (which cut out only maybe 10-20% of visible light, compared to the 80-90% that is prudent on the snowfield on a clear day) over my glasses, or not wearing my glasses but having my sunglasses on.  I opted to make the hike "blind" with sunglasses.  This meant that J led most of the way and I simply followed her footsteps, but all in all it wasn't really that bad.  In fact, after a while, I forgot that I didn't have my prescription eyewear.

(I feel compelled to note at this point that I did completely, fully recognize that I had the option of simply calling it a day and heading back home.  I chose to continue after I tried out hiking for a short distance without prescription eyewear, and found it to be acceptable.  I wouldn't have made the same decision if the conditions were anything less than perfect, which they were on Saturday.)

At Camp Muir and on the way down, I even took some photographs while "blind."  I'm kind of proud of these photos actually.  Hahaha.  Not being able to see that well actually really gave my other senses a better feel for the mountain.  I was amazed at how much "seeing" I could do with my hands and feet feeling out the terrain and grabbing hand and footholds in various areas.  But most of the way was pretty straightforward, just making sure I put my boot where J's boot had just been seconds before.

The descent was a little more challenging this time, as we had to get through a band of hard, icy snow from 10,000' back to about 8000'.  This was a painful time, as not being able to clearly make out a small difference in shades of white on the snow could mean a slip.  I did slip several times while mixing the plunge stepping with short standing glissades.  My left knee started bothering me around 8500' and we took it a little easier, but it's still sore even two days later, so I'm pretty sure I tweaked it somewhere up there.  The positive note to this is that it's definitely nothing major, and I'm sure it'll be fine with the two weeks off between now and the summit.

Once we got back to the Skyline Trail we decided to take it easy since we'd made such good time, and take as many photographs as we could.  There were a lot of other people on the trail, and at times they made good subjects against the magnificent natural backdrop.  It was a lot of fun.  We got back to the car about 3 hours and 20 minutes after leaving Muir, so it was a slow descent, relatively speaking, but we got lots of photos.

So two weeks from right now I'll hopefully be making a triumphant descent from the summit of Mount Rainier.  Until then, lots of rest and just staying out of trouble.  Physically and mentally I feel ready.  It's just a matter of not doing something stupid like twisting an ankle going down the escalator at the mall...

Hiked up to Camp Muir (10,080') again this weekend.  Had planned to spend the night, so this time we made the trek with full packs including overnight gear.  This added about ten pounds of gear from the last time we made this hike.  Combined with a less experienced group, and less favorable weather conditions, we took much more time to make it to the goal this time.

We started once again from the Jackson Visitor Center, and took the Alta Vista trail to join with the Skyline trail.  You can compare the different tracks in the PDF file (red for this time, blue for the first ascent).  Aside from the start, the only real difference was in the Skyline Trail, where this time we were compelled to stay on the trail since just about all the snow had melted, but last time we were able to take a more direct route thanks to the fact that we could go up on the snow.  Aside from that, just a little difference on the snowfield, which resulted from the lack of a truly well established bootpath this time (more on this later).

I was in my new Koflach Degre plastic boots, so the going was a little slow on the pavement and rocks of the Skyline Trail.  At this point, we were also taking a lot of breaks and taking time to snap photos along the way.  We were still planning on staying overnight at Muir, so it didn't really matter when we got up there as long as we got up there with plenty of time to set up camp and settle in.  As you can see from the photos, we were in fog almost immediately, and did not break out of the clouds until well after Pebble Creek, probably around 8000'.  Fortunately, it wasn't raining or snowing.

We knew it was going to be cold and windy up there, but I didn't expect it to get that way until we were already at Camp Muir.  So it was a bit of a surprise when I found myself breaking out the long-sleeve base layer and, a little later, the fleece, and even later, the wind- and water-proof shell.  It was a lot colder this time around, and with the fog and clouds, it meant there were a lot fewer people on the mountain as well.  Whereas we had a constant "line of ants" going up the mountain last time, we probably saw only about 30-50 people all day this time, and this included the people who were hunkering down when we reached Camp Muir.

In any case, we made our way up the rocky Skyline Trail until Pebble Creek, and finally my new boots were truly at home.  Once the snow started, they felt great, and I did my turn kicking steps in the lead.  That was the other time-consumer on this trip...  whereas we had a very well defined boot path last time, where we could pretty much just follow the person in front of us, this time we had only sporadic boot paths interspersed with areas of confusing and often frustrating trampled snow.  These were frustrating in that we had to keep making sure that the path we were choosing was going in the right general direction, and also because the trampled snow was relatively unstable, requiring the lead to kick steps.  Higher up on the climb, the temperature was low enough that the snow was starting to develop rime ice, and I briefly thought that maybe crampons might be a good idea, but we reached Muir before that thought fully developed.

The reward for all of this was that when we finally did break out of the clouds, we were treated to spectacular views of the cloud layer and of Mt. Adams far off in the sea of clouds.  It was as if Adams was there to personally welcome us after the long climb.

But the climb wasn't over yet.  We made it up the last 2000' with stern determination, but I have to admit there were a few points when morale got pretty low.  At about 8500', we decided that with the deteriorating weather and the high winds coming in, it wasn't a good idea to spend the night.  And that was one of the things I was really looking forward to.  When we made that decision, I almost said to heck with it, let's just descend now.  We did keep going though, and the whole team (all six of us, including two people we hadn't hiked with before) were able to stand above 10,000', if only for a short time.

As we ate our celebratory meal and snapped a few photos, the wind really started howling.  It was difficult to walk in a straight line because the wind kept blowing us off course.  A bunch of other climbers we talked with up there confirmed our decision to descend, and we soon began the long march down.  There were a couple of glissades along the way, but most of the snow was icy and hard.  It was a long descent, made mostly in silence.  The cloud layer made navigating somewhat of a challenge, as it was difficult to see more than 20 feet in front of us.  Fortunately, the GPS was all we needed to make sure we stayed on track (though we did have compass and map as well, just in case).  We picked up a few stragglers on the way down as well-people who'd gone up rather unprepared (some didn't have gloves, didn't have layers, didn't have navigation).  It was chilling to think of the people who've been stranded or even died on the Muir Snowfield as we aided these people down the mountain.  The snowfield should not be underestimated, and nobody should go up there without all the preparation and equipment, even on a day with good weather.  In any case, all this made the descent slower as well, and we finally made it back to the cars just before we would have needed to turn on the headlamps.

It was a long day, 18 hours from door to door, in the end.  But it was another good day of training with more weight than the summit attempt will involve, and it was good to try our skills in non-ideal conditions as well.  The biggest lesson from this hike, though, was respect for the mountain.  We saw how quickly a 40 mph wind can blow in, and what a huge difference the weather can make.

It wasn't a good weekend for training, with lots of parties and visitors from out of town in the picture, but we did make it out to Rattlesnake Ledge (~2050').  The Ledge is probably one of the most popular short hikes around here, as it's not too difficult, can be done in just a couple of hours, is in excellent condition, and is quite a short drive from the greater metro area.

We hit the trailhead just before 9 AM.  One thing I've noticed is that, on these short hikes, hitting the trail early makes all the difference in terms of the kind of folks you run into during the hike.  In general, the very early morning people tend to be more "serious" users...  on our way up we saw quite a number of trail runners coming back down, for example.  On our way down, though, we saw a lot of people who were "weekend warriors" who obviously enjoyed hiking, but who did it only on established trails during the summer.  These are the folks that didn't want to get up too early but still knew the night before that they wanted to go hiking.  If we'd stuck around 'til afternoon, there probably would have been a lot more families with kids and people who'd kind of woken up without a plan for the day, saw how nice it was outside, and said "what the heck, let's go for a hike."  Not saying that anybody is better or worse than anybody else...  just that I've noticed these little trends while I've been out there.  Goodness knows that it really wasn't that long ago that I was part of the "wake up and decide to go hiking" crowd.

That said, I have noticed that in general I don't like to do training hikes when there are a lot of less serious users on the trail.  Maybe this is because I'm a snob, but there's a definite difference between people who have been out there a lot and kind of know the etiquette, and people who don't.  Sharing the trail with others is one of the most fun things about hiking, and I enjoy the possibility of meeting people out there as much as anyone.  But when there are a lot of people on a trail, it really helps when everyone knows the conventions and "rules" so to speak.

Anyway, I'm not quite sure why I decided to bring this up in this entry, because we didn't run into any problems at all during our hike.  In fact, we had a couple of good conversations with people who were intrigued at the fact that we were doing a 2 mile hike with 1200' of elevation gain in the middle of summer with full pack, avalanche shovel, and ice axe.  It must have been quite the strange sight.  But weight is weight, and training is training...  though I hardly broke a sweat during the whole thing.  Actually, it felt quite good to be out there, and last year, I probably would have considered it a moderate challenge without a pack.  So progress has definitely been made in terms of conditioning.  It's funny how little you notice something like how in shape you are until you go and do something that you used to think was hard, and suddenly it's a walk in the park.

So I finally took the camera out there, and I'm glad I did it on an easy trail to start, because I had some issues with securing the camera in a way that was both easy to use and safe for the camera.  After some fiddling around, K showed me how he does it, and it worked a lot better.  In any case, we made it up in 55 minutes, and then spent some time just hanging out on the ledge with some other folks who were there, and taking in the view.  We made the descent in about 40 minutes.

We were down by 11, and then it was off to the races as we had to get N back to Seatac for his flight.  He made it with no problem, and on our way back, J and I decided to hit REI on the spur of the moment.  Well, it's a good thing we did, because I ended up picking up a pair of never worn-on-the-trail Koflach Degres for $125, which is something like 60% off.  Apparently, someone must have bought these mail order and returned them.  Quite the nice find.  The Gear Garage is the cheapo mountaineer's best friend...  J also picked up a pair of used Asolo plastic boots and Grivel G12 hybrid crampons this weekend at Second Ascent, our other favorite store in town.

So it was a pretty low key weekend, training-wise.  I'll be taking next weekend off to travel, so that leaves just three weekends between now and the summit attempt.  As I mentioned before, I feel ready, but knowing that there isn't a lot of time left can still be a little daunting.  We'll probably do Camp Muir again for one of those weekends, and there'll probably be another major summit attempt on one of the Cascade mountains, maybe even Mt. Adams in a one day attempt, but that's pretty much it.  We're planning to take the weekend before the summit attempt off from any major training.  So like the views from downtown, Mt. Rainier is definitely looming large in my consciousness.

Hiked up to Camp Muir (10,080') on Mt. Rainier on Saturday.

Buoyed by the successful attempt on Mt. Adams, we were a little bit, dare I say, cocky going into this weekend.  Hardly any pre-planning went into the venture, save for the last minute "who's going to drive?" discussion on Friday night.  Nonetheless, I did feel quite prepared for this, having gone over the route a million times it seemed on the maps.  This wasn't the first time we'd planned to do Muir... just the first time that we actually had weather we were comfortable with by the time we got to the trailhead.

The first part of the hike is on the Skyline Trail, starting from the Paradise parking lot at about 5500'.  Right now, there is major construction underway at Paradise for the new visitor center, so M and I made sure to get out there bright and early, finding a prime parking spot just outside the current visitor center around 8:40.  R, K, and S met us shortly after, but we dallied until 10 waiting for Z and H, who are going to be making a Rainier attempt the same weekend as us but in a different party.  Unfortunately, the communications got crossed somewhere and they were nowhere to be found, so the five of us finally just set off on our own.

The Skyline Trail is paved for a ways, and then continues on a pristine rock and gravel trail until Pebble Creek.  We hit the snow not too far in, while we were still on the maintained trail, but because the bootpath was so well defined, gaiters weren't even necessary (though I did put mine on at some point).  After Pebble Creek, K and I started to break away from the others, keeping a determined pace with minimal breaks.  There were a lot of other hikers and climbers on the route, with the perfect weather, so the line of ants going up the white snow seemed to stretch forever in both directions.  We decided to forgo breaks after noon, pushing for two hours without stopping to make Camp Muir in just over four hours.  It was a good pace, and I felt great, having been reinvigorated by the week off.

Muir was a little on the chilly side, with a steady wind of 15-20 mph coming in, so I was glad that I had my fleece and shell.  The sun protection worked a little better this time, but I still got a couple of minor burns because I wasn't as vigilant as I thought I was about putting on the sunscreen.  The other difference between this week and Adams was how hungry I was at the top.  Probably because of the skipped break, I found myself wolfing down the sandwich and banana I'd brought, and then (in a moment of questionable judgment) consuming R's egg sandwich that had fallen on the dirt earlier.  Ahem...

We spent about an hour up there, and at long last met up with Z and H, who'd arrived moments before us.  Once again, we were treated to a beautiful panorama, though this time we got to look out on Mt. Adams with the satisfaction that we stood atop that great mountain two weeks before.  The seven of us marvelled too at the rest of the route...  the summit tantalizingly close.  Of course...  the enormous jagged crevasses were standing guard over that seemingly short distance.

The glissading was slower than Adams, unfortunately.  The snow just wasn't as slick, and the slopes weren't quite as steep.  Still, I can't complain about the descent too much, as we made it back to the visitor center in about 3 hours, mixing the plunge steps with the glissades whenever possible.  We ran into one of our instructors from Climbing School as she was leading a summit attempt up, and we chatted a bit.  It was pretty satisfying to hear her say that we were doing good training-wise with a 4 hour ascent to Muir.

Man, don't ask me about the pictures.  I had my camera ready to go and then forgot it as I left home.  Ugh.