For my last training trip for Mt. Logan I knew I would be going to Mt. Rainier. Mt. Rainier is the tallest point in the state of Washington, it is also considered an active volcano. In the weeks leading up to the trip my dad and I were planning on also attempting to summit Mt. Baker in a day. A year ago we had summited the Washington peak on a two day trip. We figured we would drive to Baker, sleep, climb Baker, sleep, drive to Rainier and then climb Rainier. We hoped to spend four days on Mt. Rainier. If the weather was good we wanted to climb to the three highest peaks on Rainier. The highest point is called Columbia Crest. The other two peaks are Liberty Cap and Point Success. This all sounded great talking about it, but it was much harder than we had predicted. My dad had reached the summit crater with his dad about 20 years ago. They had been there in the summer and didn’t want to descend and then climb up to the true summit which was only a few hundred feet higher. They felt they had reached the top. When researching for this trip we found out that 70 out of the 10,000 people that attempted the mountain each year, did it before June. We knew there wouldn’t be a crowd and we were glad. In the cooler months many more crevasses were covered and there would be much less of a chance of ice or rock fall. But there would be avalanche risk when we planned on going. We wanted to go with another person, mainly because of the danger of crevasses. My dad contacted Conor Halliwell. He had been suggested to my dad for Mt. Logan. Since we already had an assistant for Logan, my dad invited Conor to come to Washington. Conor had taken the same assistant ski guide exam as the assistant going to the Yukon with us. Because of the amount of work my dad had, we left one day after we hoped for. On Thursday we picked up Conor in Squamish and drove to Mt. Rainier National Park. Along the way we stopped at MEC and Costco. The next day we had coffee at the Longmire Inn and then drove up to Paradise. Paradise is where we parked for the climb. When we reached there we learned that we needed another permit to climb. We had already purchased some online. So we drove back down to Longmire only to discover we could have self registered at Paradise. This was all frustrating but we were still in great moods as we finally parked at Paradise. I was excited because I was going to try my new boots from MEC for the first time. I desperately hoped that I wouldn’t get blisters. We put a tarp on the (wet)pavement and sorted out our gear.
When we reached the trailhead it was noon. We were walking up with a group of school kids snow shoeing when a piece of my dad’s binding broke. It had locked too far, and in trying to unlock it he had snapped off the plastic piece used to tighten the toe to the binding. We waited while he wired the binding shut and were climbing again by 12:30.
We passed some other groups at the beginning. There was a duo who had forgotten their snowshoes. I was astounded that they had still chosen to ascended. They had heavy overnight packs and were sinking into the wet snow to their knees with every step. I also saw that most of the other people were wearing snowshoes, not skis. After we had been climbing for only an hour we stopped. We all were too hot with our two pairs of pants on. The sun was beating us down and was reflecting off of the snow. We all took off our outer layer and then our base layers. We must have looked like idiots, all in our underwear on the snow slope. Once we had put our climbing pants back on we felt much better. Hiking up this we saw many more people than we had expected. There were tracks everywhere. Soon, my dad pointed out Muir camp, that was where we would be staying. I was surprised by how close it looked. However I knew not to be fooled, it was very far away. My dad also showed us where we would be climbing up. After stopping a few times to gulp down water we started to see many people skiing down. They would hoot and holler while skiing the sticky snow. We passed a group of seven that were snowshoeing up to Muir camp also. A bit after this we stopped and sat down. The rest was nice and the view was gorgeous. We could see two other volcanoes which my dad guessed were Mount Adams and St. Helens. After eating some bars we looked up at where we had to go. It looked like it was only 20 minutes away. It took two hours to reach the camp. I didn’t look up much because I didn’t want to hope we were close. By the time I walked by the wardens hut. My pack felt twice as heavy as when I had started. It had taken us 5 hours to get here. We set up our tent and watched as the light slowly faded. We weren’t outside for the sunset, but I went out after. It was still amazing.
I remembered the sunset form Baker and smiled. It had been one of the most beautiful things I’ve ever seen. The clouds had been slightly above us and we cold see the ocean. This view would have been better if it had been bathed in the same pink light. The clouds stuck in the valleys and the peaks surrounding us looked tiny. Returning to the tent we ate a delicious meal of tortellini with smoked salmon. This was the most deluxe meal I had ever had in the backcountry. It was amazing, but it had been a pain in the butt to haul up here. That night I slept well. It was clear and cold without a wisp of wind. The night promised a beautiful morning. We arose at 5:30, we had set two alarms for 4, but neither had awaken us. We ate brown rice ramen noodles with cubes of bouillon stock for breakfast. My dad and I had tried this at home and it tasted great. It didn’t work so well this time. The noodles didn’t soften and I didn’t like the taste. We all ate the noodles but agreed that we wouldn’t eat them again for a while. We had hoped that we would be able to eat them as substitutes for Mr. Noodles on Logan, I’m glad we tested it first. The night before we had packed our daypacks. We left the camp at 7:30. It was beautiful.
There were clouds filling the valleys and we saw the sun rise from our tent. After walking for about 20 minutes we reached the bottom of Cathedral rocks and put on our ski crampons. This as the first time I used them. I found that they worked very well. I felt much more comfortable on the steep slope with hard packed snow. At the top of Cathedral rocks we could see the Ingram glacier. This would be our ascent route. We had researched about this route and read that it could only be done in the Winter and early Spring. We also read that it was easier than Disappointment Cleaver which is the main ascent route. Furthermore it was the best route for skiers.
From the bottom we could see many crevasses and séracs. We suspected that the route would became clear as we approached. In the next hour we walked up and across to the bottom of the inclining glacier. We had roped up a half and hour previous to the incline in grade. We scoped our path and then headed up. I was in the middle of the rope with my dad leading and Conor at the back. We did many switchbacks and the rope became a hassle. When it became even steeper the rope didn’t bother me because I was only focusing on digging my crampons in. At one point we needed to cross over an open crevasse. My dad looked into it and carefully selected the passing point. By this time we could see clouds above us. We had read the weather available on the InReach and saw that it was supposed to start snowing around 6pm. After crossing the hole the angle became gentler. We came to a fairly flat spot and took a break. The clouds were close to us but we expected them to clear. From where we were we could see the top of the cleaver. We started climbing towards our right, there was a slight ramp to our right. When we reached the ramp we were at 3840 meters. This was 600 meters higher than I had ever been before. My previous high point was the top of Mt. Baker at 3200 meters. The clouds had come down to us. My dad looked around us and said that this was it. Because of the many previous crevasses on this glacier, my dad didn’t feel comfortable not seeing the potential icefall. We all came close and took off our skins and ski crampons.
We put on Gortex and started skiing down. We stayed tied together until we reached the top of the Cleaver. There we untied because the biggest danger was falling. If one of us fell, it would hard to break the fall. Skiing down this was pretty scary. Over the trip I had scarier moments, but this was a long time of being scared. The slope was forty degrees with no soft snow on top of wind affected surface. It would have been a great run if I was in a resort, but it was on top of an isolated ridge with cliffs on either side. I was also using boots and skis I had never used before. I slowly turned and eventually we stopped. My dad couldn’t remembered which exit point had looked the best from below. He went looking around and them we continued down further. We traversed across the top of a rock band and waited. There was a crevasse we would need to cross. My dad approached it first and looked in it. He thought it would hold and told Conor to go first because my dad had the rope. It did hold, but after the crossing the terrain became very bumpy. Conor stopped and then my dad crossed, he fell in the same spot Conor had wobbled. It looked funny but we didn’t laugh because falls in the mountains can lead to death. He was fine and he pointed where I should go. I crossed and was ready for the uneven snow. From there we put skins back on because we were just above a few huge crevasses. The climb was quick, only 10 minutes. At the top of the the crevasses we took off our skins again. We stayed roped up because we were still on a glacier. This skiing was very hard. The wind had made the snow very uneven. Skiers call it Sastrugi. We slowly descended to the top of Cathedral rocks. There we took off the rope and skied down. This was still hard skiing, but not as hard as the other slopes. At the bottom we traversed to our right. Once just above our camp it was sunny and we could see 20 people coming up to camp Muir. Once we were in our tent it was 1pm. It was weird to be done a day of climbing so early, especially when it was that cold. Inside the tent it was very warm. We told riddles for about and hour and then napped. When I was napping was when I was the most comfortable in the trip. It was warm and we were sleeping. That evening a warden came to our tent and we showed him our papers. He asked us what we had done and what we were planning on doing tomorrow. We told him about our day and said that tomorrow we would hopefully try for the summit again. He told us that tonight’s winds were expected to be 40 miles an hour. This was surprising to us because the previous night had been totally calm. He also said that tomorrow was supposed to be windy too. As we drifted to sleep the wind had already picked up. Whenever I awoke in the night I was surprised at how windy it was. It was the total opposite of the night before. Even though it was windy, it was warmer than the other night. It was warmer because there were clouds, and clouds kept the heat in. In the morning it was just as windy as it had been in the night. My dad and Conor were talking about what we were going to do while I woke up. My dad was holding the tent poles together by sitting with his back to them. When a gust of wind came they would push on him. The big problem was that the wind had changed directions. It would have been a lot better if the wind was hitting our tent head on, but in the night it had changed and now was hitting us on the side. My dad and Conor made a plan. I sat with my back against the tent to hold it up. Then we packed up all of our things. Our packs and boots needed to be dug out because the wind had moved so much snow onto them. Conor and my dad dug the packs out and then packed all our gear into them. Finally they took the fly off of the tent and I came out. We brought all of our gear into the small hut by 8:15. There was a group of three men that had stayed there overnight. They had been hoping for a summit attempt but they shut it down because of the wind. They left for Paradise at around 9:30. After this we talked about what we would do. We said that we would wait and see if the wind died down. If it did by noon we would go for the summit again. If not we would go in the morning. The wind died a little but not enough and not fast enough. We hung out around the hut all day. The wardens had left and no one else came up in the clouds. We napped and talked. At around 5 we practiced crevasse rescue. For me the refresher was much needed. After this we hiked up the slope right by there camp. It took less than 10 minutes and we watched the sun go down. Looking down at the camp the clouds were slowly dissipating.
We walked down and ate our third dinner of tortellini with salmon. That night was colder than the one before but the wind didn’t keep us awake. Alarms went off at 3. My dad and Conor had put them on the wood so that they would be able to hear them. Conor went outside and looked at the conditions. He said that it looked good. We got up and drank tea. We ate some bars and got our gear ready. We watched the sunrise at 5:30 as we reached the base of Cathedral rocks. This time our climbing was quicker because we had rested and we were more acclimatized. We could see clouds above us, but they were forecasted to leave. We walked up to the flat area before the crevasses start. We roped up and my dad sent a message to my mum asking for the weather. All of the stuff she sent us said that the weather would be getting worse. After half an hour of slow progress waiting for the weather to clear. We stopped. We waited for about 5 minutes and then Conor said what none of us wanted to. It was time to go down. The clouds above us were thick and we didn’t want to get stuck in them. We descended to the hut and packed up our gear. I was a bit nervous for the ski out because I have not skied with a big pack before. We started skiing down and I knew it would take awhile. The visibility was poor and the snow was wind effected. The first half an hour we made very little progress I was following my dad, but I was still very nervous. I knew that there wasn’t danger in falling over there, but I knew the effort it took to get up. After half an hour the visibility improved and the snow became slightly better. After that the conditions kept improving. Near the bottom the snow was actually very good. No one had been there since it had snowed and the old tracks were covered. At the very bottom footprints were everywhere. skiing this was hard and bumpy, but it only lasted about a minute. Then we were in the parking lot. Returning from the mountains is always a strange feeling. When you are away you miss the warmth and comfort of everyday life, but returning is also sad, especially when you don’t achieve your goal. This trip, even though we didn’t make the summit, was still a grand success because of all the new experiences I had.