Summer in Paradise.

My notes for this climb are not very detailed. We drove down the morning of July 16 and registered. In the old days, there were no summit feets, you just filled out the form and headed off. The climbing ranger told us there were about a hundred parties on the mountain this weekend.

The great migration, heading up to Camp Muir.

We headed up to Muir, going slowly, and stopped there for lunch, then headed across the Cowlitz Glacier and Cathedral Gap, to camp at Ingraham Flats. It was amusing to hike across the bare rocks in Cathedral Gap, and see the rocks where hundreds of ice axes had hit at the same spot, leaving scrapes.

The Cowlitz Glacier, looking back towards Muir.

We set up camp in a tent circle on Ingraham Flats. The snow was very soft the top couple of inches, almost as though there'd been snowfall recently. Once the sun went down behind the mountain ,though, the temperature dropped quickly, and the crust got hard remarkably quickly. It was amusing to need a wool hat, ten minutes after walking around in a t-shirt.

Ingraham Flats, DC, and the summit. The 10-foot snowball is visible at the base of the icefall.

Fred in the tent, with his Big Bird cup.

We slept, and got up around 3:00. Already there were a lot climbers ahead of us, we may have been nearly the last team to head out. Unfortunately, I didn't have a headlamp for this escapade (due to a last-minute mistake), and the flashlight I'd brought died. Sheesh. My new seat harness (Alpine Bod) worked well, once I got the straps adjusted properly.

We headed across the flats, past a ten-foot-high snowball, up to the cleaver. The cleaver wasn't as bad as I'd heard, there was a nice trail to follow through the snowcups.

Heading up through the cleaver.

At the top of the cleaver, there was a crevasse with a metal ladder across it. Reminded me of the stories I'd read of Everest.

Mt Adams in the alpenglow.

It was beautiful weather, but windy. At the summit we found and signed the register at Register rock, and took the requisite summit photos. Then, when I went to take a photo of Liberty Cap, the camera batteries died, so no more photos the rest of the climb.

Fred (r) and me at the summit.

The descent went smoothly, and back at the tent we packed up and headed out. Back to the car by 5 PM.

On the drive back, we watched some of the most amazing lenticular clouds forming above the mountain, stacked lenticulars, stuff I've never seen before or since. But since I was too stubborn to buy camera batteries at Paradise, I didn't get any shots of them.

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