I heard a slight tremor in my voice when I asked the blond at Whittaker Mountaineering in Ashford whether they had ice screws. Climbing Mt. Rainier had started to seem like too great a challenge just as we were reaching the mountain. In addition to buying the screws, we rented an avalanche transceiver and a snow shovel. If we got trapped in a crevasse or buried in an avalanche, we would hit the distress button and the transceiver would emit a signal that would guide rescuers to us. We would use the snow shovel to dig out a spot for our tent on the glacier. The ice screws can be used as anchors in a crevasse rescue system.
At the Ashford general store, we picked up enough food for three days on the mountain. The next day, Monday, we would hike from the trailhead at 5,400 feet and camp at either the Ingraham Flats at 11,000 feet or Camp Muir at 10,200 feet. Early Tuesday morning, weather permitting, we would travel along the Disappointment Cleaver route from the high camp to the summit at 14,411 feet. If weather ruled out a summit bid on Tuesday, we would wait it out and try again on Wednesday and Thursday if necessary. I pointed out that the six packs of Rainier Beer in the refrigerator looked appealing. Luke asked if I was going to pick some up. I answered that beer could wait until we were celebrating a successful climb.
We were silent for most of the twisting, 14 mile drive from Ashford to the Paradise Ranger Station at the trailhead. The Disappointment Cleaver route is the easiest path to the summit, but it involves 4,000 vertical feet of travel across glaciers riddled with crevasses. A rope, harness, and the ability to set up a crevasse rescue system are necessary to climb the mountain safely. The route is a long slog too. It stretches nine miles and climbs 9,000 vertical feet from trailhead to summit. A high altitude athlete can climb up and down the Disappointment Cleaver route in a single day, but most parties take two days or more.
I broke the tense silence with a list of reasons for being optimistic about our chances: The weather would be favorable on at least one of the three days we had set aside for the summit. We were a good team and could handle the thin air above 12,000 feet. Luke, who lived at 8,000 feet above sea level in Westcliffe, wouldn't be fazed at all. We would be hyper-alert, we would not fall, and, if we did, we would self-arrest before either of us went into a crevasse. Luke felt good in the abstract about our ability to reach the summit, but like me he was gripped by a fear that mighty Rainier would thwart our plans or cause us injury.
At the Paradise Ranger Station, a climbing ranger in his early 50s matter-of-factly confirmed our reservation of a camp site at Camp Muir and issued the permit we needed to climb above 10,000 feet. The registration form listed 20-odd pieces of gear considered necessary for the climb. We had all of the recommended gear and knew how to use it. I began to feel more confident. The ranger gave us a pair of blue bags that are used to pack feces off the mountain. I had no need of them because stress and anxiety eliminated any chance I'd be defecating on Rainier's glaciers.
That night we camped at Cougar Rock Campground, a few miles west of Paradise. Luke fired up his stove and made black beans and rice that came out of a box. I made and packed three days' worth of peanut butter sandwiches.
We practiced roping up as a two-man rope team. My climbing rope is 180 feet long, but we wanted to tie in so that there was only 40 feet of rope between us. To get the desired spacing, we used the modified Kiwi coil. Each of us tied in at one end of the rope using a re-woven figure eight knot. Then we took in about 10 arm span-length coils of rope, draped the coils over a shoulder, tied the coils off with an overhand knot, and finally tied into the rope a second time with a double bowline knot. We practiced the steps involved in using prusik loops to ascend the rope in the event you fall into a crevasse.
On Monday, we got up at 6:30 a.m., finished packing, and drove back to the Paradise Visitor Center. The snow fields below the Paradise Glacier still extended all the way to the parking lot. We planned to hike up the Skyline Trail to the Muir Snowfield. We would hike up the snowfield as it climbed 3,000 vertical feet from Pebble Creek to Camp Muir at 10,200 feet. Then we would decide whether to camp at Muir or on the Ingraham Flats.
We got off course immediately after starting up the Skyline Trail at 8:30 a.m. The trail is roughly u-shaped, with two trailheads at the Paradise parking lot. The route to the Muir Snowfield from the eastern trailhead is a mile or two longer than the route from the western trailhead. I thought the eastern leg of the trail was what we wanted because it seemed better defined by the bootpack. Luke pointed out my error right after we started hiking.
The Muir Snowfield turned out to be the most dispiriting terrain I've hiked. With each step up, my boot would slip back a few inches on the soft, wet snow. The blank snowfield seemed to rise above me forever. My pack weighed 50-60 pounds thanks to the rope, harness, food, and other climbing gear I was hauling. The straps on the pack cut into my trapezius muscle like a knife. Luke's pack was even heavier because it contained my four season tent.
Parched, exhausted, and drenched in sweat, I finished the snowfield at about 2:30 p.m., 30 minutes or so after Luke. He moved a lot faster despite the weight handicap because he was acclimated to alpine air. I had long since drunk all my water, so I ate an apple to rehydrate. Camp Muir has a shelter that accommodates about 20 people. Another 20-30 can camp nearby on the Cowlitz Glacier. A shirtless climbing ranger shouted, "Welcome home!" to two employees of a guiding company who got to Camp Muir at the same time as me. He gave Luke and me the cold shoulder when we asked about conditions on Ingraham Flats. His friendlier colleague said the forecast was good but high winds over the weekend made so much noise that it was impossible to sleep. When we registered at Paradise the previous day, a climber who was checking out had mentioned that the wind had destroyed the $400 tent he pitched on the Flats. Luke and I decided to camp on the Flats anyway in order to shorten our summit day.
At Camp Muir, we roped up, traversed east across the Cowlitz Glacier, and climbed up the Cathedral Gap in the Cathedral Rocks to reach Ingraham Flats. It took about 1.5 hours because the 11,000 foot air and my 50 pound pack had me sucking wind. Had he been solo, Luke would have closed the distance in 30 minutes.
There were four tents on the Flats. We decided to pitch ours on a 10 foot long flat area that other parties had dug out of the glacier. The uphill wall of our campsite was about four feet high. I had gone without water for two hours and was painfully thirsty. While Luke shoveled snow to create a flat step of the same size as the tent's footprint, I started melting snow to make drinking water. The wind blasting down the mountain shook the tent while we pitched it. The metal stakes that had come with it didn't stick when driven into the glacier. We secured the front of the tent with the snow shovel, ice axes, and snow pickets. We secured the back of the tent, which fronted the uphill wall of the campsite, by burying the fly in the snow. "What will hold the tent down tomorrow when we take the pickets and axes up the mountain?" I asked Luke. He thought for a while before saying, "We'll collapse the tent and bury it in snow. It won't go anywhere."
When the first pot of snow melted, I pumped the water through my filter too quickly and the water overflowed onto my hands, which went numb. The sun had gone down and the temperature had dropped sharply as soon as we reached the Flats. We moved the stove under the fly of the tent so that we could cook and melt snow away from the wind. Soon afterwards I was warm and no longer thirsty. We had a spaghetti with white sauce and cheddar cheese that was too good for roughing it on a glacier.
From our campsite, we could see Little Tahoma Peak, elev. 11,138', and a big crevasse.
On Tuesday, I snoozed the alarm when it first sounded at 1:00 a.m. Fifteen minutes later I got up and took a look at the night sky through the plastic window on the fly of the tent: there were no clouds, and layer upon layer of stars was visible. "We're going to get our summit," I said to Luke.
At 2:10 a.m., we started hiking up the Ingraham to the Disappointment Cleaver, a steep ridge of rock that separates the Ingraham from the Emmons Glacier. We could see the headlamps of five other parties at various points ahead of and behind us, including one commercially guided team of six climbers. On the steep snow channels that climb up the Disappointment Cleaver, the 40 feet of rope between us was too much. We should have used a 15 foot interval. When we finished the DC around 4:00 a.m., the commercial guide leading the big party said to Luke, with condescension, "Can we pass you? It will make it easier for you to follow the route." His tone reflected a false sense of superiority since we'd had no trouble finding and staying on the route, and he had no greater claim to being on Rainier than we had. But, sad to say, the altitude had left me slower than the big team, which had probably spent an extra day or two acclimating, so we let them pass.
After the Cleaver, the route gained altitude more gradually as it snaked north and back south across the Emmons Glacier before reaching the summit. We passed massive crevasses, some of which seemed to be over a hundred feet deep. During a break on the Emmons, my ice axe slipped out of my hand. Luke and I watched in silence as it slid 50 feet down the glacier before coming to a rest. Luke climbed down and retrieved the axe while I belayed him. Losing that axe would have denied me the summit and turned the descent into a dangerous and tedious exercise. From then on I traveled with the axe clipped into the climbing rope.
We were on the summit by 9:15 a.m. The wind was blasting at 40 miles per hour and the temperature was in the 20s. It was no place to tarry. We took a few photographs and started the descent.
By noon, we were back on the Flats, where we napped and made drinking water before breaking down the tent and resuming the descent. Because we packed hastily, the packs were even more uncomfortable than on the ascent, but at least gravity was now working for us.
Descending the Muir Snowfield.
Around 5:15 p.m., we reached the parking lot at the trailhead. I turned in the climbing registration card at the ranger station. In the space for comments, I wrote, "Rainier is wonderful." I had expected that I would be ecstatic on the drive out of the park as long as we reached the summit. But having reached the summit and made it down in one piece, I was too fatigued for ecstasy.
Back at Whittaker Mountaineering in Ashford, we had pizza and two bottles of Rainier Beer to celebrate the climb. A few tables away, the blond who sold me the ice screws was sitting with the climbing ranger from Camp Muir. Small world. When I woke up the next morning at Seth's place, I had a miserable sunburn. My lips were swollen and coated in pus that turned yellow when it dried. My nose was charred. It was a modest price to pay for the exhilaration of camping on the Ingraham Glacier and topping out on Rainier's summit.
