It had been two years since I’d last climbed and
skied
Rainier and it was gnawing at me that during the relatively short window
this
spring to climb and ski it I had missed out.
As Becky and I worked our way through our summertime ‘to-do’ list, we
were starting to run out of destinations on our list. Somehow,
amazingly, we
had a 100% success rate on every climbing/skiing trip this
summer…that’s never
happened before. I guess when Washington is having its driest summer in
ages, one doesn't have to worry about getting weathered off a mountain.
So, with our list
getting rather short due to all the successful trips, and a couple of
the destinations being areas that were
currently burning up north- we decided somewhat at the last minute to go
take a
shot at Rainier.
This time of year, the mountain is a lumpy, bumpy mess of
sun-cupped snow, waist-high nieve penitente snow formations, bare rock (of
varying quality), and lots of open crevasses.
While its virtually impossible to ski from the summit this time of year,
its still a fairly straightforward climb so long as you stick to the
Disappointment Cleaver route, which is constantly rerouted around new obstacles
and has a handful of ladder crossings that the guiding companies temporarily use for those spots where obstacles cannot be
end-ran.
We drove to Rainier Saturday morning and picked up our
permit- we’d hoped to camp at 11,000ft
at Ingraham Flats to get away from the day trippers and noise of Camp Muir, but
it was already all booked up, so we’d join the masses at Camp Muir (10,000ft) for the
night.
We took our
time, and reached camp around 2pm, and spent the rest of the afternoon
rehydrating and napping. Two friends of ours, Amar and Khanh, arrived
that afternoon...they're a fair bit faster than us so they'd be leaving
camp at 6am while Becky and I were opting for the more traditional
middle-of-the-night start time.
I
got about three hours of sleep, Becky only got about one, but we were
up at midnight having our morning coffee and pop-tarts.
We
hopped into the bootpack and joined a string of headlamps slowly
chugging up the mountain. It had been over a decade since I'd climbed
the Disappointment Cleaver route and Becky had never even seen it
before, so ascending the 1000ft of scree and friable rock was mildly
nerve-wracking as our view was limited to the throw of our headlamps.
We
took a short break at the top of the DC and had some food. Sunrise was
about two hours away and we were both feeling the affects of sleep
deprivation, but we snacked on some caffeinated gu's and kept on going.
As
the route wrapped around from the upper Ingraham glacier to the upper
Nisqually, we climbed up and walked across several ladders spanning
crevasses that would otherwise require a lot of work to get around or be
flat out impassible. The guiding companies do a ton of work to
maintain the route so their guided climbs have as straightforward a
route as possible all summer.
As
the sun began to rise, we could make out Point Success off to the west,
one of the lower sub-summits of Rainier, and the altimeter showed he
had about 1,000ft to go.
The
wind picked up, our jackets went on and we ate a bit more food and just
kept chugging along. Eventually the crater rim came in to view and we
knew we'd made it. Up over the crater rim and we could see the true
summit on the far side. We dumped the packs and rope and made the quick
out and back hike to the top to take a few pictures, then ran
the stove to refill our water bottles.
On
the way up, we hadn't hit a single slowdown on the route where large
guided parties or groups of less experienced climbers were taking a long
time crossing crevasses, but on the way down we started hitting the
traffic jams. Fortunately, several large parties let us scoot by in so
we weren't held up. Becky was already talking about her after climb
meal...she wanted to hit Katsu Burger and they closed at 9pm, so we had a
schedule to keep.
Descending
the Disappointment Cleaver during daylight was far more straightforward
than the trip up in the night. Now that we could see, it was obvious
that the route was very straightforward, mostly on low angle
scree...nothing to worry about. It was around noon when we arrived at
Ingraham Flats, 11,000ft, and we stopped for a lunch break. It was very
warm by now and we were both back to just our polypro shirts..no need
for a windproof layer or puffy jackets.
Back
down across Cathedral Gap and the Cowlitz Glacier brought us to our
tent, where we refilled our water bottles one more time and packed up
our camp. The goal was to get to Paradise by 5pm. The Muir
snowfield was a mess of open meltwater creeks and exposed ice, but in
the mid-afternoon heat we were able to skip wearing crampons and
shuffle, slide, and boot-ski as much of it as possible. We were glad we hadn't tried to ski it- there were two folks attempting to ski the dirty, lumpy old snow and we actually got down on foot faster than the skiers.
Another
long break at the end of the snowfield for a few more snacks and the
last of our water and then it was off to the car. We got back right
around 5pm, and pointed the car for Seattle. The weekend ended with
successfully making it to the Georgetown neighborhood in Seattle by 8pm
where we had our triumphant Katsu burger dinner (Katsu burger being a
deep-fried, Japanese inspired, cheeseburger....so good....so unhealthy
that one needs a special occasion for it).
