Mt. Rainier

25 years ago — shortly after my second birthday — my parents climbed Mt. Rainier together. Somewhere along the way my dad took a stunning picture of my mom, alone on the mountain, slowly traversing a glacier, high above the cloud level. That picture has been hanging in the hallway by my room ever since (give or take a couple years). Every morning for nearly 20 years I've been greeted by Mt. Rainier as I stumble downstairs to breakfast. The image has slowly worked it's way into my mind to the point that subconsciously I knew some day I would climb Rainier. I wasn't sure when, but I knew it would happen.

Well, "some day" turns out to be next Wednesday! Once I decided to stay in Seattle for the summer, I realized that (a) I was still in decent from snowboarding for 8 months and (b) I had no idea when I'd have another free summer in Seattle. I naively called up a couple of guided ascent companies to see what dates were free. It turns out that climbing Rainier is fairly popular (duh!) and you need to book dates in February! Fortunately they have a waiting list that I quickly signed up for and about a month ago I got a happy call telling me that there was room for two. So on next Wednesday my friend James and I begin our ascent up mountain.

So what exactly does a climb up Rainier involve? I'm glad you asked. In our case, climbing Rainier is a three day event. Well two days, actually; the first day we spend training near base camp, covering details like "what can I do to help prevent myself from dying?" We begin hiking around 9am on day two, climbing from Paradise (5,400 feet) to Camp Muir (10,060 feet). The 4.5 mile hike will take us most of the day — hiking in snow is slow.

After a restless "night" at Camp Muir, we're roused at an ungodly hour (around 2am) for our final ascent. We climb in darkness and (hopefully) reach the summit at 14,410 feet shortly after sunrise. After enjoying our time on top of the world, we slowly begin our descent back, pausing briefly at Camp Muir on our way back down to the bottom. All told we'll spend something like 14 hours hiking on the third day. And, no matter how I spin it, that's a lot of hiking. This will definitely be the most I've spent to have my ass thoroughly kicked.

So that's the gist of it. Mt. Rainier is an extremely difficult and somewhat frightening task, but it is a once in a life time opportunity. And I can't wait to get started.