Just above Paradise.
The hike up started pretty warm. I got a good photo of a marmot standing outside his burrow. As we hiked up the stairs (always the toughest, most discouraging part) Rainier was still mostly clear, with some swaths of clouds across the face.
About the time we hit the snowfield, it started snowing. There had been a very light drizzle for a bit, but the snowflakes came down, just enough to be interesting at first, but the further up we got, the heavier the snow got.
I finally stopped and put on my new aluminum Stubai crampons; they’re trickier than I’d anticipated, and it was unpleasant crouching there in the wind trying to figure it out, freezing my butt off in the snow.
Passed over some remarkably deep crevasses on the upper Muir snowfield. I’ve heard about them, but these are the first I’ve seen.
Got to camp Muir around 2:30. 3 ½ hours, not bad time for the conditions and heavy packs. The hut was distressingly full when we arrived, but most of the people cleared out; at one point it was down to about five total, including us. One party was there, planning on summiting the next day, but bagged it and left mid-afternoon.
I got to the hut wearing my shorts, gloves, and my shell, and went inside to the shelter and chaos. Almost immediately after arriving, I put on every piece of clothing I'd brought, and didn’t see how I’d ever get warm, but an hour or so hanging out in my sleeping bag and drinking hot chocolate helped quite a bit.
Cooked dinner from my sleeping bag on the upper shelf. There was a bit of a panic when I couldn’t get the stove to work; it wouldn’t pump. But I had the repair kit and was able to clean out and lube the plunger, and it worked just fine.
The ranger came in and checked the permits; he said he thought things might clear by midnight or so, which is what we hoped, but at the time seemed pretty optomistic.
This is the first time I'd stayed at the hut, and though it was nice to be out of the wind and cold, it seemed like things were kind of a mess here, though, scattered about; I worried about missing something important when we leave in the dark. (And, in fact, Dan forgot his glasses when we left.)
I discovered that a boot laid on its side with a heavy polypro shirt folded on top of it makes a pretty good pillow, better than my usual approach of jamming all the extra clothes into the stuff sack.
Several people came into the hut around 11:00. I can’t imagine them hiking up the snowfield in the dark; what an epic that must have been. They were as quiet as they could be, I thought, trying to be considerate of those of us trying to sleep. I was really hoping to find out what their story was, but never did.
We got up about midnight, and started brewing up, etc. I had two cups of cocoa, which I guess helped some, and we filled all the water bottles and my platypus.
We got started around 2:00; roped up on the snow, and got a quarter mile down the trail on the Cowlitz glacier when Dan realized he’d left his pack back where we roped up, so I went back to get it.
It’s been a long time since I’ve followed on a rope (besides on Adams I guess) and it’s tougher than I remembered. The headlamp cast a shadow that made it look like there were two ropes stretching out before me, not just one.
I took my crampons off before Cathedral Rocks, because I didn’t want to mess up my brand-new aluminum crampons on the rock, and didn’t put them back on until the top of the cleaver. They go on pretty easily, though I think I need to cut off the straps; they seem much longer than they need to be.
We got to the top of the cleaver around 5:00, about when the sun started to rise, and took a break at the top of the cleaver for a few minutes, and I tried a couple of photographs, and then we headed on up. I thought, okay, a couple more hours, and we’ll be on the summit. With every step, it seemed, the snow lightened as the sun rose, and we stopped to watch as the orange disk emerged above the horizon.
One of the consequences of yesterday’s snow was that there was a lot of deep powder in the boot track, and it was a lot of work plowing though it. Dan led for a while, and then I took over. There were places where it was knee deep, or deeper. The route meandered all over the side of the mountain. The boot track (or, the trail) was pretty evident, marked with wands and a pretty obvious track, event though it was filled with snow, sometimes pretty deep, but it zigged and zagged all over.
We saw the first lights below us about the time we got to the top of the cleaver. It’s hard to count the lights from above, I thought there must have been at least twenty people, but we learned later that there was an RMI party of about six, and another two-person party, both of whom seemed quite a bit faster than us. Of course, they didn’t have to break trail like we did.
A problem with a platypus is said to be that the tube can freeze up in the cold, and despite being careful about blowing the water back into the bladder, I did get some ice crystals in my mouth. Not enough to stop the tube, but enough to remind me that it was an issue.
We got to the summit right around 11:00. Dan and I walked up to register rock, followed by Kemp, and signed in, but didn’t bother going to the true summit. This was the first time Dan had signed the register. He said it was out of principle, but he also didn’t know where it was. I was a bit surprised that I was able to identify it so readily, having not been up there in six years.
The book had room in it (unlike the last time I’d been up there.) It been put up there around the middle of July, and it was probably 2/3 filled. But there was a lot of empty space; I bet half the lines on each page were empty. They must go through twenty registers a year. Just the storage of all those things must be an issue.
I tried calling Heidi from the summit, but the damned phone didn’t work there either. I had this idea of calling Peter’s school and talking to Peter, to tell him I was on the summit, but no dice. Sheesh. That would have been a gas, if I could have gotten the call through.
The rocks on the crater rim were covered in rime ice, which was pretty cool looking .I pointed it out to Kemp, who coming from Arkansas doesn’t have much experience with that. And, the snow up there was carved into crazy shapes that reminded me of some of the sandstone formations you see in the southwest.
The descent took a long time. I was remembering from the last time I did DC that the descent took a lot longer than it seemed like it should, but even so, this was pretty tedious. Part of the problem, of course, was all the zigzagging, the route is a lot longer than it was a month ago when Dan did it last, and longer than I remembered. But it’s just a big mountain. It’s way bigger than Hood, or Adams, or Baker, or any of the other mountains I’ve been on, just incomparably more massive.
Partway down, we passed a party of two, a guy and a woman with a German accent, who'd been in the hut, heading up. Late in the day, I thought, but I guess it was only about 2:00 or so. More troubling, they’d brought bivouac gear, bivvy sacks, sleeping pads, etc. As we left them, I heard her say that she was hungry, and they stopped for a rest. I don’t know what was going on there; if they intended to sleep on the summit, or what. It seemed like they were going pretty slow, and had started rather late, to be doing a day climb.
I was really hurting as we got down the cleaver, and Dan was in a pretty bad mood, partly because of how slow we were going, but mostly because he was really thirsty. We were pushing it going down the rocks on the cleaver, and I managed to slip and fall about ten feet. It wasn’t serious, but it did hurt (and bruised my ribs a bit, scraped my forearms and a couple of fingers.) I think I was stepping more gingerly than I should have, worrying about ruining my aluminum crampons. They seemed to have come through the ordeal just fine, though.
But even just descending the cleaver was interminable. We were following behind an RMI team, so we had to wait a few minutes because they’d stopped, which was a drag because we were just sitting there in the sun. The transition across Ingraham Flats was reasonable, but descending Cathedral rocks was way longer than it should have been. I took off my crampons on Ingraham flats, while we were standing there waiting for the RMI group to finish their next rest, which made the descent of the rocks much easier. Even the Cowlitz was twice as wide as it had seemed going up.
Back at the hut, we melted more snow, and rehydrated. It made a lot of difference, especially for Dan. It gets pretty tiring that the snow is all gritty, and so the water ends up with some grit in it, although most of it settles out. Maybe a Melita coffee filter would help. When I finally broke down the stove, I had to take the pot outside and wipe it out with snow, the layer of sludgy grit was so annoying.
I was out of Advil, unfortunately, and so was Dan, but this other guy there had some Motrin, and generously gave me a couple, and I think it enabled me to do the descent without feeling completely ghastly. I had a good headache going, and my knees hurt some, and my feet hurt pretty bad. It’s hard to know what helped more, the Motrin or the water. I guess I needed both.
Packing up was still an ordeal, between boiling water, and thinking I’d lost the stuff sack for my sleeping bag, and just the tedium of dragging stuff inside and outside. I was really dreading the descent; as I was sitting there in the hut, I thought, man, I won’t be able to do this at all. But I did okay, thought not as fast as Kemp or Dan.
We passed several people going up to Muir as we descended, at least five. It’s a busy place up there. On the descent I ate as many of those peanut M&Ms I’d brought as I could, to keep my energy up. I’m a bit abashed that it was Michael who pointed out they’re better than the plain, because the peanuts have protein, but it’s certainly the case.
I had been worrying for a while about calling Heidi to let her know I was okay, and the cellular phone not working, so I was feeling pretty smug that I had that calling card in my wallet. So the first thing I did after getting back to the car was to get the card and go to the pay phone by the bathrooms. But it was out of order, and the note on the wall said to use the one in the visitor’s center. Which was closed. So, we didn’t find a pay phone we could use until about 7:00, in Ashford.
Equipment notes: I'm starting to suspect that my boots may be part of the problem. I was wearing my Eigers, and I think there just isn't enough cushioning in the sole. Descending just hurts after a while. With everyone I've climbed with the last few years, I've done fine on the ascent, but on the descent they leave me behind. I guess I need to talk to Dan Page The Cobbler.
Also, this is two consecutive climbs where I wasn't able to get cell phone service. I guess I'm going to stop hauling the cell phone along, since you evidently have to be on Mt. Hood to get service any more.