My body sunk into the seat. The force of the speeding behemoth was exhilarating. I looked down out of the tiny porthole to see the blurry pavement racing by. Then, almost suddenly, we left the Earth’s surface. My earbuds kicking out Polygondwanaland by King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard, heightening the rush.
It’s May 24, 2018 and I am on flight 295 from Minneapolis to Portland. Our ultimate destination is the summit of Mount Rainier in Washington state, by way of the popular Emmons Glacier route. My friend Dan is somewhere closer to the front of the aircraft. Katie is on another flight close behind us. And Steve, the trip’s Master Arranger will be meeting up with us tonight in camp, after catching another flight out of Minneapolis after a full shift at a local outdoor gear store. We will be meeting up with our fifth team member Kerrick in Portland. He will be driving up from Corvallis where he is a graduate student.
This will be my first attempt at a mountain. I expressed interest in joining the Rainier Team to Steve about six months ago. Kerrick and a guy named Johnny were the original trip organizers. But life intervened for Johnny and another person were unable to make the schedule, so a spot opened up and there I was. An adventure opportunity I had to take. A happy accident.
I’ve been a rock and ice climber for over ten years. But never a mountaineer. I found myself doing two main types of preparation, I will call them ropes and stairs. I loaded up my backpack with weights, an old rope and water. I did long sessions of outdoor stair climbing with this rig. Up and down. My earbuds trickled with a famous mountaineer’s audio book - Ed Viesturs’, No Shortcuts to the Top: Climbing the World's 14 Highest Peaks. This helped fire some stoke in me. When not lugging a pack up and down a staircase our crew would meet up every Saturday at a local golf course. There was a steepish hill that gifted us with some remaining April snow. We tied up, cramponed up and walked up, down and around. This is the rope portion of our team training. Our aim was to get comfortable walking together tied in, as we would be on Rainier. All the while learning the techniques of glacier travel and crevasse avoidance and rescue right here in Minnesota. We had a few how-to books and our friend Edric, a former mountain guide, to teach us. His donated knowledge and time were most valuable.
My airplane carry on consisted of an MP3 player, loaded with audio books and tunes. I figured this would be lighter and more compact than a book or two. Once we landed in Portland and met up with Katie, we took the train into Portland, then the bus downtown. The three of us had all of our gear on us for our five days on the mountain. I had one giant 120-liter duffel strapped to my back. Dan and Katie had similar set-ups. Walking around Portland that day, we must have looked a bit odd. After some delicious Thai food, we swung by 10 Barrel Brewing for a refreshment and to meet up with Kerrick. We loaded up Kerrick’s Subaru and headed North to Mount Rainier.
We arrived at Big Creek Campground, in the shadow of Mount Rainier, just as dusk was setting in. I rolled out a ground cloth, inflated my pad and unfurled my sleeping bag. That night we were too tired or too excited to set up tents. I could see trees and stars as darkness fell. Steve joined us at some crazy hour in the middle of the night. In the morning, after a café breakfast we headed to Mount Rainier National Park. Upon arrival, we stopped to check in at the ranger station. Then drove the long way around the mountain, due to a snow-damaged road, to get to our launch point at the White River Campground parking lot. The sun was out as we strewed out our gear on the warm asphalt. Kerrick and I divided up the barrowed tent we would be sharing on the mountain. As a team we divided up fuel and got our individual packs loaded and adjusted to perfection. Once set, and dressed, we headed up the Glacier Basin Trail. The trail was steep and long. We passed through luscious old growth forests and crosses several picturesque streams. The tourists on this lower trail section looked at us as if we were aliens from another planet. As we trekked higher, we caught occasional glimpses of the massive volcano that is Rainier. The trail transitioned from soil to snow. This made for some frustrating walking as we all had on light-weight trail runners. Full-on mountaineering boots were not needed, just yet. We arrived at Glacier Basin camp. We really couldn’t tell if we had arrived at first, as everything was snow-covered. But we found a dry clearing overlooking a glacier-fed stream. At 6000’, us Midwesterners were feeling it. After some dinner, we hunkered down into our tents for our first night on the mountain. It was windy. And it felt so extreme to be sleeping up in this alpine environment.
Camp Schurman
9,600ish feet
On Saturday, May 26th, we woke up to a beautiful day in the mountains. Breakfast, coffee, and leisurely pack-up. We all stuck our feet into our mountaineering boots, laced them up and were soon off. We buried our trail runner shoes in a large plastic bag in the snow adjacent to camp, there would be no need for them until our return hike. This day was a steep day. We trudged up Inter Glacier. Dan was stoked and strong so we just let him break trail in the steep snow ahead of us. We eventually made it to Steamboat Prow and the views were amazing. We decided to rope up and head down a rock trail off of the ridge to finally set foot on Emmons Glacier. Once on the glacier, another thousand or so feet of snow travel put us at Camp Schurman and at 9510 feet. The ranger station there is a delightful stone structure. Tibetan prayer flags dance in the wind. A plastic pink lawn flamingo, with an action figure riding its back, stands guard. We check in and get the lay of the land. The team finds an empty pre-dug pad to set up on. We melt some snow to re-hydrate dinner and hit the sack.
We wake up to another perfectly clear day on Sunday, May 27th. This is our rest day. But after breakfast we decide to rope up, and hike up the mountain a short way, as a practice, tied into each other for safety as we would be on our summit push. Steve, Dan and myself on one rope team. Kerrick and Katie on the other. All systems go! Back at camp I try to day-sleep. But camp is bustling as fellow adventures arrive and reggae music gently pumping out of somewhere and all of this penetrates my earplugs. We will be leaving for the summit at 11pm tonight. Traveling at night is a standard safe-practice for mountain travelers. The colder temperatures solidify the snow. This makes for easier walking and locks in place anything that may be loose and fall on you. I try to relax in the late afternoon my starting a new audio book on my MP3 player. “Kiss or Kill” by famed alpinist Mark Twight. The title is from a song from one of my favorite bands, X, the punk legends from 1980’s Los Angeles. Punk rock and mountain climbing, I was hooked.
I hear Kerrick’s alarm go off. I knew this was coming. A nervous night sleep for sure. I get some of my things together and look up to check in with my tent make. “It’s go time!”, he says staring me in the eyes. We crawl out of the Nemo tent to find the rest of our crew just starting to melt snow for breakfast. The wind is blowing like mad. It’s cold and it’s dark. After some breakfast we gear up and head up the mountain. I am wearing my ice climbing boots and crampons, softshell pants with thin fleece long underwear, a wool t-shirt, a lightweight fleece top, and airy synthetic insulating layer and a softshell jacket. A wool cycling cap and a climbing helmet tops it all off. I have on a harness and have my piolet tethered to that. In my small pack I have a liter of water a few energy bars, chocolate and a larger synthetic parka. Glacier sunglasses will come out soon after sunrise.
We’re doing it. Hiking by headlamp I can only see within the bubble around me. This is advantageous, as it keeps me focused on the next step in the snow. Then the next. The sun slowly revels itself. We can now see by sunlight, a little more and a little more, as we ascend. And the views get increasingly amazing with each step. We step over a few fissures in the glacier. They are less than a foot wide, but looking down left, then right there is apparently no bottom. Down inside is a rich, glowing blue hue that sinks deep into the crevasse.
Sunrise on Rainier.
Crevasse!
We’ve been gone hours. The zig-zag trail up the mountain is well-treaded and packed. This is critical, because navigating on this vast mountainside would be like doing so a prairie propped on a 45-degree angle. Route finding would be difficult and danger-ridden for our novice team. I look up to see the horizon and its apparent end, only to spot another a little higher. And then another. The curse of the false summit. The terrain is getting steeper still. I look to my right, off of the narrow trail, into the void of a long steep descending slope, seemingly without end. I found this terrifying and wasn’t prepared for that.
When we reached the summit, 14, 410 feet, I was worked. It took considerable effort to get here. The hike to this point was strenuous. We took breaks and communicated well with each other, checking in on how we were each doing. Here we are! A feeling of accomplishment swelled through the group. We took so many selfies and group photos, I lost count. The sky was clear and our line of sight was infinite in all directions. A swell of emotions.
But reality soon sunk in. As all mountaineers know the summit is only half way – you have to get down. And the statistics were not on the side of the climber for this second act. Most accidents happen on the descent. We all know this. And proceeded down the path we came up on with caution and determination. It was a totally different hike. We were looking down. The sky and surrounding mountains were illuminated by full sun. It was gorgeous, but we were still in danger.
Fear was still with me as the daylight revealed the steepness and vastness of the mountainside in which we found ourselves. And the fatigue catching up to me. Closer and closer to camp I felt the rope snap taught on my harness. I was moving slower that my rope team. I was tired, the snow was now like deep sand in afternoon sun.
The tent city at Camp Schurman was a welcome site. The colors burst from our vantage point up the mountain. We could see home! As we got closer, I did not see where my tent was. Kerrick and Katie were way ahead of us and likely already in camp. I was at first confused then filled with fatigue-ridden rage. Where was our tent? I need a deep nap when I get down there. Why would Kerrick pack it up? Does he think that we are hiking back down to the cars tonight? In addition to being a crazy idea, there is no physical way that that is happening for me!
We get closer and I see Kerrick climbing up on a prow above camp. “What the hell dude?” I yell out. “Our tent blew away, and I think it’s down in that crevasse.”, he replied. It took me several moments for the implications of this to sink into my tired brain. Inside that tent was my zero-degree sleeping bag, along with a bunch of other gear. We can’t spend the night up here without a tent or sleeping bags. And that $700 tent was borrowed from a friend of a friend. Kerrick, still somehow full of energy, enlisted to a ranger at the station. Together the scurried down slope to the edge of the crevasse. The ranger built a snow anchor and Kerrick rappelled in. The rest of us stood in awe. We weren’t sure how this high-consequence situation would playout. We sat and stared down the slope. After seemingly forever, a head and a bright orange structure appeared out of the crack in the glacier. He did it! He fished out the tent and made it out safely. It got up to where we all were. Everything was still inside. I didn’t lose a thing, except a cheap ground cloth. That was close. The tent had simply blown away. A trick that we later learned from the ranger was to cover your tent stakes with snow. If stakes are left exposed to the high-altitude sun, they can heat up and become dislodged from the snowy ground. Lesson learned. Kerrick and I moved the tent back tour original spot and fastened the tent to the earth with piolets, large snow anchors, and anything else that we could find. That tent wasn’t going anywhere until we wanted it to.
With the disappearing tent ordeal over, dinner was made and devoured. Victory beers all around. Yes, we hiked in beer up to Camp Schurman for precisely this purpose. Well-deserved and well worth the extra weight.
On Tuesday morning we scooped up our camps and headed down the mountain. The descent down Inter Glacier was a breeze. What took us seemingly hours of struggle to ascend was quickly descended via a laugh-out-loud glissade - we all slid about a mile down the mountain on our butts. We retrieved our buried stash of shoes and headed down to the cars. We each hiked at our own pace. I found myself alone on the trail. The solitude was welcome. Lighter and full of excitement from achieving the summit, the forest felt magical. In the parking lot we all looked a bit beaten. Our Minnesotan faces wrecked by the high-altitude sun and wind.
The trip to the summit of my first mountain was a success. We all made it home safe. I stepped well outside of my comfort zonae and was immensely reward. I can’t wait for what’s next.
Rainier beer, victory Rainier summit beer!
