Climbing Mt. Rainier with OSAT - July 16-19, 1997

I recently climbed Mt. Rainier via the Emmons Glacier route, with a party from the OSAT climbing club.

The party consisted of four rope-team leaders: Kim, the party leader, Chris, Wendy, and Jim, all seemingly in their 30's; and seven first-timers: myself, a 41-year-old slightly-asthmatic computer hacker; Pat, a 47-year old jogger; Tyler and Frank, a couple of twenty-something dudes; Anita, 30's; Dwight, mid-40's; Chris #2, 30-something (forgive me, folks, if I've categorized you inappropriately.)

After training since April (mostly hiking, and stairclimbing at Golden Gardens), Pat, the so-called friend who conned me into this adventure, and I went to Rainier a day ahead of the rest of the team. We did this because we are wiser, not just older, than the other members of the crew, and wanted to a) break the initial 5-mile leg from White River campground to Camp Schurman into two, and b) give ourselves one more day to acclimate to the altitude. Although the route we'd be taking, the Emmons Glacier route, is considered the easiest way up Rainier, we didn't want to die on the first day.

Wednesday afternoon, July 16th, Pat and I hiked 3.3 miles from White River (4,400' altitude) to Glacier Basin (6,000') and stayed the night. Thursday morning, the rest caught up, and we roped up and ascended the mushy snow of the Interglacier (6,800') to Camp Schurman at 9500' altitude. The day started out with some clouds, but by the time we got into Schurman, the wind was blowing hard, the sun was barely visible, and there were occasional spatterings of icy snow. There were only 6 or so other parties there. We set up camp as quickly as possible, and cooked dinner in the lee of our tents. I went to bed around 7PM Thursday, with the wind whipping so hard on the 4-season tent I'd rented, I thought we'd take off down the mountain. Apparently the weather broke about 9 that night, and when I awoke to heed the call of nature at 4:30AM Friday, it was a little cold, completely clear, and the almost-full moon was high in the sky, with the lights of the Puget Sound megalopolis in the distance.

We were awakened about 7:30AM by the noise from the increasing crowd at camp; by the end of Friday, we'd hear that Camp Muir, on the south side of the mountain, was full, with over a hundred people, and Schurman was also full, with 48 at the main camp and both overflow areas full. Luckily, we earlybirds got the good sites, close to the solar composting outhouse (but not *too* close, if you know what I mean). We spent most of Friday eating -- I mean, "carbo loading"; drinking -- um, that is, "pre-hydrating"; and basking in the sun -- er, "incubating carcinomas".

At 2:00PM we had a group meeting, where Kim told us to be roped up and ready to roll at 11:00PM Friday. Word from people coming down the mountain was that the hot weather was making things really mushy; this is not just harder work to walk in, but means that the snow bridges crossing crevasses, which are nice and firm and safe in the cool of the night, become slushy deathtraps during the heat of the day, just waiting to collapse - sometimes of their own weight. Kim wanted us back down to basecamp before noon Saturday.

Pat had started getting his gear ready for the final ascent around 11AM. I, however, played it cool and waited till about 4PM to start figuring out what the prudent minimum amount of stuff I could take to the top was (actually, I already kinda knew). On the way to basecamp my pack must have weighed 40 or 50 pounds; I would only take 20 lbs. or so to the top: enough clothes for the worst weather; enough food and water to keep me going, plus a little more; and a sleeping bag - my share of my rope team's emergency gear (each rope team carried, as "team emergency gear", a first aid kit, a stove with fuel and cook-kit, a sleeping bag, and a sleeping pad; all this in case someone had to stay put part way up, due to injury). By 6PM Friday, some people were still up, talking quietly to each other, while others tried to sleep. Eventually, I was one of the last to go into my tent and try to rest. I think I did fall asleep for a half hour or so.

My alarm watch woke me at 9PM, and I arose to find the sun setting on our left, as we faced down the slope, and the moon rising on our right. You could see the shadow of the mountain projecting out into the sky, towards the rising moon. We got our climbing harnesses and gear on, shouldered our packs, and tied in to the rope. There were three teams of three people each, and one team of two. Kim's team was first up the hill, and my rope team, lead by Chris #1, with Dwight in the middle, was second. Wendy, who initially was to be my rope team leader, was leading the team behind mine. Jim brought up the rear with his two-person team. Since I was last in line on my rope, this meant I could talk to Wendy as we went up. This was very fortunate for me, since I really appreciated the encouragement she gave me.

Although the moon was nearly full, it was high in the east, and since we were on the north face of Rainier, the light it gave us was oblique; so we used our headlights most, but not all, of the time. As we climbed out of Schurman, we could see other groups getting ready and setting out. All we saw were little strings of blue-white firefly lights; we were too far away to see any motion or detail.

The next seven-and-a-half hours kind of blend together. The first milestone I remember was getting to be higher than Little Tahoma (Mt. Tahoma), which is that rocky little guy to the left of Rainier as seen from Seattle. It tops out at about 11,000', and getting above it was pretty cool. We were just a bit above this, at maybe 1 or 2 in the morning, when we stopped at one of our once-an-hour five-minute breaks, that word came that we were going to re-arrange the rope teams; Jim was going to be sent back down the mountain with Dwight, who was not going to make it. Later, Chris #1 told me that Dwight was becoming unresponsive, and when asked, said he was feeling quite out of it. Jim was picked to lead Dwight down because Jim was a "pickup", replacing someone else who was originally scheduled to climb but couldn't make it. Chris noticed Dwight's situation because all along the climb, the rope leaders are talking to their charges: "How ya doin', Rob?"; "Looking good; how do you feel?", and so forth. We are told we should always reply, even if we're tired or pre-occupied or whatever, as this is one of the leader's ways of seeing if we're starting to lose it to fatigue or altitude sickness.

At around 12,000' we came to a large crevasse we'd been warned about. It spread across the slope in front of us, was three or four feet wide, and had three little snow bridges across it. One was clearly cracked and sagging; the others, each two or three feet wide, looked OK. Kim and Chris spread out to see if they could find either end of the crevasse; several minutes later they came back and said they could not, so an "end run" wasn't an option. Kim said she was fairly sure about us getting across OK, but coming back was dicey. I'm not sure what decided her, but after maybe 10 minutes, we were told we were going to continue up. Everyone scooted across as quickly as we could, with no problem. But of course, we still had to get back across coming down.

We continued up "The Corridor", the standard route, pretty much straight up the Emmons glacier. At least, it looks straight on the map. There were many switchbacks and turns, end-running many crevasses. There were maybe a half dozen crevasses we had to cross that were large enough for us to worry about falling in. (There were about the same number of tiny ones, some no more than 6 inches across, that you couldn't fall into if you tried. Assuming, that is, that they didn't widen out just below the surface, with thin ice at the lip, which is always a possibility.) The one that was the most fun was the "bergschrund", the gap between the glacier and the ice cap on top of the mountain, just below the "False Summit" at about 13,000'. We switchbacked up a steep face, onto the top of a ridge. Walking to the right about 50' at the top of this ridge, you came to a little chute, just wide enough to slide down, with places to put your crampons into the snow on either side. After scooting down a couple feet, you placed your ice axe into a hole, grabbed the shaft of it, and swung down, dropping onto an ice bridge to cross to a safe island. From there, you walked another 30 feet to jump a two-foot crevasse onto another island, and then across a snow bridge to safety. This was a rather involved process, since first the leader of a rope team did the first step, belayed (that is, secured) by his #2 partner; then once on the island, he belayed the partner moving up. Then they all moved up one position and did it again. At each step, only one person was moving; only one person at any given moment, theoretically, was at risk of falling.

When we all were across this series of obstacles, we took a break. Not long into this break, Kim decided that Chris #2 was not going to make it, and that she would guide him down herself; she designated Chris #1 the new leader. Kind of a shame for Chris #2 to make it so close - only a thousand feet short - but apparently he was pretty sick and out of it. Still, he'd gone 90% of the way - quite an accomplishment.

Summitting was a bit of an anti-climax - but only a bit. At 6:30AM Saturday, the top of the mountain came fairly quickly, and uneventfully. No clambering up to a pinnacle - the top is very large and levels out gradually. So someone actually had to tell me, "Here we are!". But sure enough, we were on a little hill that led up the to the "tippity top" (not a technical climbing term), and led around the crater itself. The crater at the top of Rainier is surprisingly flat-bottomed; it looks like a big King Dome had its roof chopped off at about the 100-level and was dusted with snow. In places along the edge, bare dirt slopes down to the floor, and steam rises from the dirt, and from strange humps of ice rising near the edge. Mt. Rainier is obviously just dozing, and not dead yet.

We stayed an hour; I peed on the top of Mt. Rainier.

The return trip was long and numbing; we left the top at 7:30AM Saturday, and would not arrive back at Schurman until 11:30AM. Chris had me head our rope team, which now consisted of me, Anita, Pat, and Chris; we were first down the hill. Frank, Tyler and Wendy came behind us. The crevasse at 12,000' we had been so worried about was, of course, still there. There had been an almost constant stream of people still coming up, as we were descending, so we knew at least one bridge was still intact. But how strong was it? When we got to it, I called to Chris to come along side me and give me instructions. "Go real fast" was all he had to say. I did, and all was well. It feels great to get across one of those puppies, I'll tell ya.

Back at Schurman, we ate some, drank all the water that Jim had thoughtfully spent time making for us when he came back early, and then broke camp, eventually reaching White River again at around 4 or 5. I am not sure what the time was, as by this point I was beat, having had only an hour's sleep in the previous 36 hours or so, and having hiked about 10 miles. As I bopped along the trail to WR, I was hallucinating - I thought I saw a cat along the trail at one point, and once thought I saw a cabin made entirely of living trees. Then, about a mile from the end, I looked up and saw Janet, her mother, her sister, Sue, and Sue's husband and daughter. No hallucination, though - they'd come out to meet me. After I dropped my gear at my car, and changed clothes, we had a great picnic at White River, and then I motored home - still hallucinating a bit. But I knew it was real when a moose jumped out 30 feet in front of my car. I missed him, and got home OK, to sleep for about 12 hours.  

I have pictures.  

 - rob, 22July97