Mt. Rainier

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.

On to Washington and Mt Rainier

July 9, 2012: with a case of the Irish flu we packed up the car and left the wedding to drive out to Washington. We drove through beautiful gorges and stopped with the kids to swim in a river. The temps were as high as 107 degrees as we got out of the mountains in Western Idaho and into Oregon. We drove about halfway and stopped in a motel in Pendleton, OR for the night. The next morning we finished the drive to Ashford, WA which is the base town for climbing Mt. Rainier. The drive was spectacular. We saw all the vineyards and fruit orchards as well as beautiful rivers, gorges and mountains. Our first glimpse of Rainier made us very nervous as it rises above the landscape like nothing I've ever seen. James said, "that could be Everest for all I know". That's how huge it looked. We got to the cabin that Donna & Lou rented and settled in a bit before our orientation meeting with Melissa that afternoon. She covered what the plan was and what gear we needed. I got no sleep on Monday night due to being anxious about the climb. Tuesday morning James, Lou and I headed to RMI's base camp in town to pick out all of our rental gear. We felt like fish out of water with all the new equipment and gear but eventually got it all figured out. In those moments you feel totally unprepared to make decisions even on which socks to buy because you dont know anything. Tuesday was all about snow school. After we got our gear we headed into the National Park and up to the Paradise parking lot. We hiked for about 30 minutes to a spot where Melissa showed us all the techniques and safety procedures we need to know. We practiced different techniques to walk up hill, downhill, rest stepping, pressure breathing. We learned to use our ice axes to self arrest in case we or one of our team members falls. We also roped up to each other and practiced walking as a unit which is very important for the safety of the team. The amount of slack between you and a team member can mean the difference between being easy to save in case of a fall or not. All the while the mountain loomed but once we were up there and in our gear and doing the work my anxiety was gone. As I type this it is 5 am on wednesday and I can't sleep because we are about to leave to begin the true climb in a few hours. clearly I still have some butterflies but nothing like yesterday. We got home from snow school at 4pm and played with the kids. We took them back to
RMI's base camp in town for dinner and to pick up our meal plans for the climb. Afterwards we packed all of our gear and got ready. Melissa came over to help with packing and we all turned in early. I slept from about 10pm to 4:30 am. Now I am just hydrating and resting before we leave. The plan is to start climbing around 9:30 am. It should take about 5 hours to reach Camp Muir where we will sleep. Melissa will have tents all set up for us and we just need to eat, drink and rest as much as we can. We'll try to catch a few hours of rest. Then we wake around 11pm and start climbing in the dark. We will climb for 6 to 9 hours to the summit, snap a picture and head back to Camp Muir. We'll pack up and rest a bit then hike back to the car. James, Jon and I are on that schedule. Lou is going to spend an extra night at Muir and make his summit attempt the next night. Wish us luck!

Ketchum and The Wedding

July 9,2012: we spent two great weeks in Ketchum. The first week we lived with Jon & Melissa and the second week was in a condo when the entire Duval Family arrived for vacation together. We joined the YMCA where they have an incredible pool with a water slide, lazy river, and fountains. We did a lot of swimming with the kids as the weather was sunny and hot every day. We took them to the top of the ski mountain one day which was great. The kids loved riding on the gondola and chair lift. We ate at the restaurant up on the mountain for lunch. It had a very European feel as we sat on the balcony at a big picnic bench in the sunshine to eat. It was a great day. We did some running, hiking, biking, shooting and visited a few playgrounds. The kids got a full service tour of the fire department thanks to our friend Eric. We celebrated Molly's 2nd birthday with all of the cousins. The kids had a blast hanging out together and the grown ups even got to go out to eat alone a few nights. We had a really fun sushi dinner in one of those private rooms and a large group dinner where we had our first chance to meet Melissa's family. We drank a lot of beers just sitting around the pool or even in the town square while the kids ran around playing together in the fountains. One night in town they had a criterium where bike racers rode fast laps through a course right in the center of town. It was a really fun atmosphere with lots of people out to spectate, beer gardens and food stands set up everywhere. The culmination of all the fun in Ketchum was when we moved an hour north to Stanley, ID to the Idaho Rocky Mountain Ranch for the wedding. I have never seen such a beautiful location for a wedding. The sawtooth mountains are the backdrop and the ranch itself is simple but amazing. We had a two bedroom cabin that was gorgeous. They have a swimming pool that is entirely heated from the hot springs. The water comes in from the mountain at 107 degrees and runs in a pipe through the Salmon River to be cooled and spills into the pool at around 103. It was awesome and the kids loved dunking in the cold shower then into the pool. You can ride horses, bikes, paddle boats, fish. We had babysitters up there so we were able to enjoy the evening activities a bit more. Everything about the weekend was very special and centered around Melissa & Jon. It was a fantastic wedding.

Road Trip Over!!

June 23,2012: we left Jackson and made it to ketchum! Thank you jesse for hosting us in beautiful JH. We are so happy to be unpacked and settled in for a bit. It's been great to see Jon & Melissa and their beautiful new home. We went for trail runs, went down to the river and are having a blast. This weather is amazing and we're excited for all there is to do.

Road Trip Day 14: Jackson

June 22,2012: everyone had a pretty good sleep in the tent last night. James got up and went to hike Snow king which is a steep ski mountain right in town. It is two miles to the top and gives you great views of the Tetons and the Jackson Hole area. The kids and I went grocery shopping and made a nice breakfast at Jesse's. Afterwards we headed into Teton National park to go hiking. We went into the Laurence S Rockefeller preserve and hiked to Phelps lake on a recommendation from Rhys and Schutty. We saw a moose in a stream on the way there. It was just under two miles from the car to the lot. It was not very steep but we carried Molly & JJ most of the way. Casey did a great job hiking the whole way. The reward was an amazingly beautiful mountain lake surrounded by forest. We found a nice spot to sit and have a picnic. The kids took their clothes off and waded around. James, Casey, Julia and I all dove in for a quick dunk. It was cold but not too bad. The girls made buddies with a little boy who was hiking with his mother and we hiked out with them. It was a beautiful hike and a great way to send the day in the Jackson area. When we got back home we changed and all walked over to Daryl's house for a BBQ. There were lots of kids that the girls played with and a fun dinner with high school friends, college friends and new Jackson friends. After the BBQ we put the kids to bed and went to the Million Dollar Cowboy bar with Kate & Jake Schutt. It was a fun day and night.

Road Trip Day 13-Yellowstone & JH

June 21,2012: so after our early morning escape from bear country campground we saw more amazing scenery in Yellowstone. We saw lots of deer grazing, tons of bison walking in the road. There was lots of fog settled into the valleys which added to the beauty. There was a small crowd who saw a grizzly but he was hiding when we drove up. We went to the grand canyon of Yellowstone. The falls are impressive. We hiked down to the viewing platform that looks over right where the falls tumble over. After seeing the falls and canyon we headed over to the geyser basin to look at all the hot springs and geysers. The pools are so beautiful and the colors out of this world. You wish you could settle in for a soak. We looked for the spot where you can swim in a hot spring but were unable to find it. We saw grand prismatic spring and old faithful plus lots of others. We saw more bison, deer and some huge elk with giant antlers. After what felt like a full day we headed out of Yellowstone. We had a picnic lunch and then did the beautiful drive south to Jackson. This may be one of the most beautiful stretches of road I have driven. When you see the lakes and Tetons it is breathtaking. I was the only one who saw it as everyone else was asleep. We drove right to Jessie's store, Four Daughters, and Jess and I went for a little walk. Then we took the kids to Teton Village and they played on the playground, in the fountains and we saw a show about birds of prey where they had al the birds for everyone to see. We ate a nice pizza dinner at Calico on the picnic tables on their scenic lawn. Afterwards we came back to Jessie's apartment for showers and set up our tent in her backyard. Also Casey lost her second tooth today, I guess the tooth fairy will have to visit our tent.

Road Trip Day 12-Beartooth & Yellowstone

June 20,2012: we headed south from Billings onto the Beartooth Highway. This is a beautiful mountain road 68 miles long from Red Lodge, MT to Cooke City, WY just by the Northeast gate to Yellowstone. You get as high as 10,947 feet. There are incredible views and the plateaus up there are amazing. We saw lots of snow which the kids wanted to stop and play in, we saw foxes, waterfalls and endless beautiful scenery. After a few hours driving the Beartooth we entered Yellowstone. Right away we saw mountain goat, tons of bison, deer and the most beautiful landscapes I have ever seen. It's so incredible how preserved it is. We drove over to mammoth springs and then made the long trek to our camp site at bridge bay. We tried to reserve a different one but they were all full. On the way to bridge bay we passed they the Hayden valley and at one point there were about 50 people out of their cars looking at something. We quickly saw the grizzly bear across the river. It was very far away but easy to tell what it was. We felt very lucky. We finally got to our campground and it was packed. We were in a far site with woods all around. The bear warning about not having anything at all in your tent or campsite made me so nervous. I did not sleep a wink, between my fear of a bear attack, Molly's coughing, and temperatures in the low 20's we were freezing. Finally at 5am James and I put the heat on in the car, put the kids in, packed up camp hastily and got out of there!