July 12, 2012: today we made it to the summit of Mt Rainier! Yesterday we began hiking around 9:30am. The first day you gain about 4700 feet of elevation. The Paradise parking lot is at 5400 feet and you hike about 4.5 miles to Camp Muir at 10,188 feet. We left wearing shorts and t shirts with hats, sunglasses, boots, gaiters and our packs. On the first day our packs weighed around 40 pounds as they are filled with sleeping bags, all our warm clothes and food and water. We hiked with trekking poles in each hand. It was a gorgeous day. You have to be so careful to continually apply sunscreen as the constant glare from the snow is very powerful. We walked in a straight line following Melissa one after another. We would hike for an hour then stop for a break for 15 minutes. You sit on your pack and quickly drink and eat and rest then we're off again. The first hour and a half was a combination of snow and then some rocks that had become exposed as snow starts to melt down low. We crossed streams and saw waterfalls. You can't really look around too much while hiking because you are looking down at the trail and concentrating on your footing and breathing. It's not that there is anything too hairy or dangerous the first day but you are trying to maintain a very precise rhythm and do your rest stepping which increases your efficiency. It's harder then it sounds and for me, if I started to look up and around I would walk off the narrow trail and lose my rhythm. After about an hour and a half we got onto the Muir Snowfield. This is just an enormous snow covered slope up to the glacier and Camp Muir. A word that seemed to be used repeatedly about this section was "slog". It really was a matter of continuing to put one foot in front of the other for an hour, resting and doing it again until we got there. Finally, at our fourth break, we could see Camp Muir just ahead. At this break Melissa left us and hiked ahead much faster to set up our tents and get things ready for us. There was nothing difficult to do but follow the path and continue the slog for another 30 minutes or so. We arrived at Camp Muir around 2pm after 4 and a half hours of hiking. I felt good the whole time although I was very happy to take my pack off for good and sit for more than 15 minutes. The views were amazing you can see Mt. Hood, Mt. Adams, and Mt. St. Helens rising up out of the land it was really gorgeous. Camp Muir itself is a rocky ridge that has the snow field on one side and a glacier on the other. There are two very small huts located on the rocky ridge where the rangers and guides sleep. There are also two of the nastiest toilets I've ever been in up there. You are not allowed to pee on the snow around camp Muir and must use the toilets. They stink! On the glacier, right next to the ridge, there were about 25 tents set up. Ours were the highest up, cut into the slope. We unpacked our stuff, got dry socks on, and sat down on a sleeping pad that we put on a little shelf James shoveled into the snow like a couch. Melissa melted snow to make us water and we just sat and hydrated and ate. She then told us our plans for that night and what to wear and what to put in our packs. Around 6:30 pm we got into our tents and lay down to try and sleep. It was very difficult for me to sleep despite how tired I was. It was light, noisy, early, and I could not shut my brain down thinking about what lay ahead. Finally around 10 or 10:30 I fell asleep. Melissa woke us up at 12:20am. From that point we had an hour to get ready before we began the climb. The hour passed very quickly with eating breakfast, getting dressed, packed, using the bathroom and getting all set to climb. I wore thicker socks, boots, gaiters and crampons on my feet. Long underwear and climbing pants on my legs with my harness on top of that. I wore a wool long underwear top with my avalanche receiver over that and a fairly light jacket over it. It was not too cold at all at that time surprisingly. I wore light gloves, my winter hat with helmet over it with my headlamp on. We carried our ice axes this time and in our packs we just had more layers and food and water. Our packs were so wonderfully light when we put them on compared to the day before. The moon was an orange crescent laying low near the mountains and the stars were abundant as we set off around 1:20 am. When you looked out at the route ahead of you you can see lines of climbers ahead of you discernible only by the little glowing circles of their headlamps. It looked so cool but it was also crazy to think we would be as high and as far away as they were in a short time. For the climb, which is the section from Camp Muir to the summit and back, we are all roped together. Melissa is in front and I was behind her then James then Jon. We are each separated by around 20-25 feet of rope. Again you cannot look around at all because there is so much to do. You need to stay in the very narrow path, your ice axe is always carried in your hand that is up the mountain, you need to maintain a very strict amount of slack between you and the person in front of you, you are trying not to catch your crampons on anything and trip, and you are trying to do your rest-stepping and pressure breathing techniques so as to be as efficient as possible and all this by only the light from your headlamp. It is all very new and exciting. Now that we are on the glacier safety is the utmost importance. There are crevasses that are ever changing and possibilities for rock or ice falls and you have to be on high alert at all times. There are three real breaks before you get to the summit. The first called the flats, the second is the disappointment cleaver, the third is high break and then you push to the summit. The first section we walked up and across the glacier then onto a very rocky section and around onto another glacier. At these breaks the first thing you do is put on a heavy parka and try to eat and drinks little. It is hard to take that warm parka off and put it in your pack after break but your body quickly warms up again as you start climbing. The second section is the longest. You go up and around a big crevasse, then you hustle through the icefall and rockfall area, then you get onto a steep rocky section called the cleaver and then onto the steep snowy section which is known as the spine of the cleaver. The break up here was freezing. It was now around 4am and the wind was blowing pretty hard. We were now at about 12,000 feet. When we began to climb again there were a few very slow teams right in front of us. For awhile there was no safe place to pass so we just had to endure the slow pace, which was not bad except that we were freezing. Eventually Melissa took us off the path and in a place where it was steep switchbacks we would go right up the middle to cut a corner and get in front of someone. This was the physically most demanding part as we quickened our pace to overcome these slower teams and it was on very steep terrain. We watched the sun rise from high break at 13,500 feet. It was chilly and windy here too but the best sunrise I have ever seen. From high break it seemed a short haul to the summit. I began to feel the effects of the altitude here as I felt a little light headed for the last 15 minutes or so. We reached the summit at 5:50am. It was a great pace as it took us just 4 and a half hours to summit. According to Melissa we had ideal snow and weather conditions and a very quick route. The route can be different all the time and this day it was very direct and made for a great summit climb for us. When we reached the summit you are at the crater of the volcano. We walked down into the crater and dropped our packs and had a break to eat and drink a little. We then walked to the far side of the crater without packs to take pictures on the highest point, at 14,411 feet. I began to get very emotional as we walked up to the high point. It has been a long time since I have set a difficult goal for myself, worked so hard at it, and finally accomplished it. All those mornings struggling out of bed at 5 am to hit the treadmill for sprints and pyramids and wearing the pack with weight in it paid off. I was crying a few times as we were way up there. We took a bunch of pictures and signed our names in the log book that they keep on top. This was a first time for James and I, it was Jon's second summit and Melissa's 92 summit! After that we walked back down into the crater, collected our stuff and headed down. You move much more quickly descending but you have to be just as attentive to safety and procedure. We descended to Camp Muir in about two hours or so. It kills your quads and knees to descend but it was still great. It was interesting to see parts of the climb that we had done in the dark. We got to camp Muir and rested then we packed up and headed down the snow field to the car. It took us two hours to descend to the car and it felt very long as we were just exhausted. Our feet hurt and we couldn't wait to get our boots off. When we got back to the cabin we ate potato chips and sat in the hot tub. We had to battle to stay awake but we tried to play with the kids since Donna had had them alone for three days. It was a long afternoon and my sleep that night was long and deep! All told it was a fantastic adventure and we were thrilled to make it to the top. We are incredibly grateful to Melissa for making it all possible and for guiding us through every single step. Pictures to come soon once I get them from Melissa. This is the only one I have from when we got back down to the car.
