Fred and Mark came by around 4:30, and we took off, to Tom’s house. Tom lives on Beacon Hill with an enormous black dog who seemed quite sad about not getting to come along. His girlfriend/fiancee came by, and we took off, Fred, Mark and I in Mark’s car, Tom and Terri in Tom’s. Since Tom had worked until 10:30 last night, he hadn't had a chance to shope, so we had to stop at a grocery store in Puyallup, Top Foods, and we ended up not getting to Paradise until 7:45 or so, but early enough that we were able to avoid paying an entrance fee.

Sunrise on Rainier, from the Nisqually bridge

There was a bunch of snow. The walls at the edge of the parking lot were probably 20 feet high. I put on my polypro long johns under my pants, but by the time we’d gotten half an hour out, the sun was up and I had to duck behind some trees and take them off. For most of the hike, I was comfortable in just my polypro shirt and sometimes gloves.

The snow conditions were pretty good. Everyone but me had showshoes, but no one needed them. There was a dusting of powder over a pretty hard crust of sometimes-icy snow. If there hadn’t been any tracks to follow, the snowshoes would have been necessary, I think.

On the last stretch of the Muir snowfield, it was pretty firm and fast going. I was winded, and started tasting tequila from last night, which was interesting because I had kind of forgotten about my margaritas.

I got to Camp Muir at 12:35. It was totally deserted, pretty novel to be there and not see another soul. Fred arrived probably twenty minutes later, and Mark, then Tom and Terri. Some other people arrived soon after, including a woman that Mark was quite taken by. She seemed a little like his ex, vivacious and pretty, and not at all winded from hiking up there. She was pretty impressed by our food selection, my kipper snacks and fred’s cookies and big sandwitch.

Looking up from Muir, the beehive and Gibraltar Rock.

Fred, feeling overheated from the hike up to Camp Muir.

Me, Fred, Tom, Teri, and Mark.

The descent is always longer than it looks like it should be, partly because you can see the parking lot for the second half of the descent, and as you decend, new features seem to rise up and interpose themselves between you and the destination. There was almost no glissading possible; the snow just wasn’t any good for it.

On the descent, we saw this tent and igloo.

We all stopped for dinner at this sports bar on Highway 7. The food wasn’t that great, but it was pretty cheap. It sure was a luxury to have Mark driving, I was able it sit in the back seat and curl up and join in the conversation when it got interesting.

Russ and I were supposed to do Fisher Chimneys on Shuksan today, but he called over the weekend to say he couldn't, he'd got a temp job at Microsoft, starting this morning. (Later, he told me he'd been in agony, looking at Rainier looming over the freeway as he drove over to Redmond.) So, I piddled around the house, doing little things, then, I took off for Mt. Rainier. I figured, it’s a beautiful day, I could spend it running the chipper-shredder and buying some wood to start on the Morris footstool, or I could go do something I haven’t done in a while, and won’t be able to do again for the next six or eight months.

It’s nice that I am together enough that I can gather up my climbing gear in a few minutes, without even checking my list. The only thing that I ended up forgetting was a bandana, and I was okay without it.

On the drive down, I got lost, again, in Puyallup, where the highway makes a left turn, and spent a fair amount of time driving around and swearing. And, when I finally got to the park, I had to sit in a backup for 15 minutes waiting for road work. I planned on getting to the park around 1:00; but I didn’t get to the parking lot until about 2:30. I’d figured 3 hours to get to camp Muir, and 90 minutes to get back down. Starting this late was pushing it, but what the hell.

It occurred to me as I drove down there, that I’ve taken that route, the last 50 miles or so, anyhow, on a bike more often than a car, since it’s the RAMROD course. And, it was sort of interesting to look at the course from inside a car. There were a couple of guys riding up to Paradise, to add to the effect.

Rainer in September

The hike up was sublime. It’s been a long time since I’ve been at Paradise when there was that little snow, and the place was just gorgeous. The trees were lush and green, the lupines and Indian paintbrush were in bloom, everything was green and lush and just like paradise.

I got to camp Muir in about two hours and twenty minutes, much quicker than I’d expected. It was quicker going on the trails, of course, and the snow was easy to walk on, so I made good time. I stopped for a snack for ten minutes when I felt myself flagging about two hours into the hike. And I got to see a crevasse on the Muir snowfield, which I never have before, though Fred said he’d seen them.

The ridge up to Gibraltar, with Muir on the right, and the summit glaciers gleaming above.

Over the course of the hike, I conceived of the idea of Mt. Rainier as a cathedral. It seems more than just a metaphor, I think, and on this outing I was gripped by the accuracy of the idea. People have modified it, of course, adding thousands of steps leading up to the entrance, but it looms up there, bigger and grander and more sublime than any manmade cathedral, more detail, more evidence of God’s might and inspiration than any carved stone and glass building. Looking up from Paradise, the Nisqually icefall looks like an enormous rose window. Everywhere you look is details: the basalt colonnades, the tree islands, the welded tuff rocks, the glacier scars on the rocks; the glaciers and icefalls themselves, Fuhrer Finger now a cataract, and the waterfalls everywhere. I stopped to see Narada falls for the first time, and I’m glad I did. From Narada falls I looked up at the road cut into the hillside a few hundred feet up, and there above that rock was an immense basalt formation like the beehive, just set there in the trees for you to notice if you’re inclined. If you don’t feel the presence of God there, I can’t imagine feeling It in some building somewhere with music playing.

In fairness, the spur to those thoughts was seeing a guided group slogging along at a glacial pace up the mountain, with two guides and three clients. I passed them at the first real snow, when the guide was explaining to them about rest-steps and breathing and such, and it occurred to me that these people have no business on the mountain; it cheapens it for everyone. It’s like teaching someone the responses and everything for a religious service in a religion you don’t know anything about, just so you can be part of this service you won’t understand, but you can take photos and maybe video, and go back and tell your friends what it’s like to be in a Tibetan Buddhist ritual.

Maybe I’m overreacting, but it does seem like it cheapens the experience for everyone involved. On the other hand, it probably saves lives. And it gives climbers the chance to climb for a living.

Yesterday, Fred called about going on a hike today. I called him back in the evening and said it probably wouldn’t work, but after I hung up, Heidi said I should go. So, I called him back, and we ended up going to Camp Muir. Fred got a season pass, for the cost of two entrances.

The day was stunning, just beautiful. The weather at Paradise was considerably warmer than it was at home yesterday, but the snow was firm and not the least sloppy, as I’d feared. About halfway up to Camp Muir, my pager went off. A work number, of course. I stopped and called in with my cell phone. It was a little goofy in a funny way to get a page, and have to call in with the cellular phone and talk him through it, but I guess it’ll make for a good story in years to come. Fred was pretty amused, so I told him about the guy on RAMROD who received a cell phone call on the ride, shortly before the Longmire entrance, and who then dialed in and changed his voicemail message.

The Kautz Icefall.

An uncrevassed Winthrop glacier, and the cathedral rocks. Cadaver Gap (where Willi Unsold died in an avalanche) is to the left, the standard route goes to the right.

Fred (l) sporting a beard this winter, and me.

Football at Muir.

We got back to the car and discovered that I’d left the lights on, and the battery was dead. A replay of last year at Mt. Hood. Fortunately, he was able to bump start it (an unsung advantage of manual transmissions) and we got out with no real problems.

The lodge in December.

The plan was to do Little Tahoma from Paradise. I'd called the climbing rangers on Friday, and was told that conditions were okay, but we'd have to approach from Paradise because the White River campground was already closed. I made sure to ask about registering, since I knew we'd have to pay the summit fee: could we register early in the morning? "You can register at 2:00 AM if you want," he told me. "You can self-register."

I set my watch for 3:15, but was already up so I got out of the house a little early, and went over and picked up Fred. He’d rented a pack for the hike. Then, to Tom Hanson’s house to pick him up, and then to Mt. Rainier.

Tom fell asleep in the back of the car, and when he woke up inside the park, we had some fun with him, teasing him about how we were lost, and did he recognize the road, and so on. Fred thought that Tom should have recognized it right away, since he’s ridden RAMROD several times, and that just seemed to irritate Tom more.

Then, at the base of the road up to Paradise ... the road was gated. Locked. With a sign that announced that the road would be closed until 10:00 AM for snow plowing. At this point, it hadn’t snowed in a couple of weeks.

I was pretty furious because that guy I spoke with Friday hadn’t said a word about it. I dug out my Mt. Rainier map, that I’ve been dragging around in that red bag for the last year or more, and we looked at the possibility of doing a hike on the West Side Road. Unfortunately, an inspection revealed that the road wasn’t closed five miles in, as the map indicated, but right at the roadhead.

So, we ended up driving back to Elbe, and getting coffee from the two competing latte stands across the street from each other, and I chatted with the woman who ran the stand where we were. Turns out she knows about the gate being down. And we ran into another person, a park employee in a pickup truck, on the way out, who told us that yeah, they do this regularly, although it "just depends."

Then, at Tom’s insistence, we drove back to the gate, a little before 8:00, and it was open. So we drove up, and were about the fourth vehicle in the parking lot.

Winter berries at Paradise.

A bare Nisqually Icefall. Note the snowed-in crevasses.

Looking over to Little Tahoma. It would have been a slow, meandering approach.

Above Muir, the beehive on the left. I liked the sculpted snow in this scene.

A couple of times I felt like turning back, looking for some reason not to go on, but I did, and got to the beehive, where I took a quick photo and headed back down.

I thought Fred and Tom had both left; I saw a couple of parties of two heading down the hill, but when I got to the hut, Fred was still there, although somewhat cold. So I got out of my crampons and we headed down the hill. Man, the hike down was long. It feels like it’s a longer hike down from Camp Muir than up there. It’s so demoralizing. That’s the great thing about Hood; it’s two hours down from the summit.

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