Climbing More Mountains!!! June '09

Mt Rainier

This is the mountain that Greg, I and a group of friends just climbed!

These top two pictures are not mine, I copied them from the internet because we never got a view of the mountain from a distance. This one is a view from Seattle.

Gotta have the token picture of all our stuff laid out in the front room!

We drove out on Wed afternoon, got to our friend Scott's house by 10:30. After catching up and making a last minute run to the store we got to bed around 2. Woke up by 5:30, got ready and had breakfast and were out the door by 6:30.

Scott got up early and made us waffles to start the day off.

3 hours later we pulled into the National park! It is an amazing area, so green and beautiful. We had rain and snow most of the day, which made everything seem more alive and vibrant.

Getting everything packed up and ready for the trek in

The group! Left: Dan (our fearless leader!), Scott, Corianne, John, Greg, Mallary

The first part of the hike was up a river bed. Soon we made it to the cold white wet stuff...

Taking a break. We had to haul alot of gear and stuff up the mountain. Everyone's pack were filled to the brim and then some. I swear my pack weighed 500 lbs. My shoulders are still sore and tight from carrying that up and down from base camp!

Out of the green and into the white.

Greg and Dan working on there navigation skills. It was so nice to be up there with a map, 2 GPS's, and 3 altimeter watches ;-) I felt so safe knew we'd never get lost!

Hiking in a complete white-out!

It was so beautiful up there. I almost forgot it was June!

Left: Scott, John, and Corianne

Most of the time you judge distance from one spot to another with distance. This trip was completely different, we used altitude. We started hiking at 4,500' (feet) then up to 9,500' where we camped, then to the top of the mountain at 14,500'-ish. So a 10,000 ft gain from the car. It was a definite leg burner! Kinda like a stair stepper work out for 8-9 hours.

Little cold! Had to stop and rope up the last hour of our hike to cross and walk up a glacier.

We made it to the camp site! What a wonderful feeling! Oh, wait the wind was blowing 40+ mph with wind gusts up to the 70's all night! The boys braved the cold and dug us a nice snow pit to put the tents up in. Corianne and I went and spent a hour or so in the park rangers hut by a stove and staying nice and toasty warm! It was horrible when they came to get us. We bundled right back up and walked right back out into the frigid air.

As you can see our tents were well protected against the wind. Good work guys!

Another group and their set up.

Friday morning was beautiful! Blue skies above and clouds below. Felt like we were in an airplane.

Friday we just hung out to get ready to start our climb that night. We got all roped up and practiced some rescue techniques and skills that we might need on the mountain.

This was a group coming to camp that day. It's a long trek to where we camped. It took us about 8 and a half hours from our car to the camp. It also shows just how small we are compared to the mountain.

There is no way in a picture to show you how tall that hill is behind Greg. haha, It was even hard to tell by just looking at it from where we are. Therefore let me try to describe it to you... That hill is like standing near the bottom of Mt Timpanogus and looking straight up near the top. That is almost the top of Rainier behind him. It is a 5,000 vertical feet relief. With the snow there is absolutely no depth perception. Some of those bumps are 100-500 ft ice cliffs. The only way that we were able to get an idea was to watch one of the "climbing/park Rangers" Skin (ski, like what Greg does in the winter) up the glacier. Near the top you could barely see him, a black spec in a field of white.

Looking down at camp. We had our tents on the left, then other groups on the right. The campsite sat right between two big glaciers, one on either side of this ridge.

Ice Fall...Aka: a big jumbled mess that should be avoided.

This is where we made dinner and melted snow for water, then hit the sleeping bags around 7:30 that night. I had been so sleep deprived before then that I had no problem falling asleep till 11:30 pm, Greg on the other hand struggled. My alarm went off with it being pitch black outside. We stumbled around the tent putting on our snow pants, jackets, socks, and boots while trying to wake up and remove the fog from our heads.

Once we stepped out of the tent our senses seemed to jump to alert mode. The only thing that was slow was our fingers they got so cold while we were trying to tie knots, putting on our harness and crampons without gloves on.

Almost ready! I wasn't sure which feeling was stronger the excitment or the nerves and butterflies. We started the hike at 1 am. with only the lights on our heads to show us the way

Rope leading to...

3 Headlights ahead breaking the trail. Thats all I could see for the first 4 hours then I looked back at the horizen and found...

One of the most amazingly-beautiful sights in my life. The horizon was on fire! It was to beautiful and somewhat surreal.

The morning and sunrise kept on getting better and better as the lights turned on

We took a break around 5:30 am to get some water and granola bars for breakfast. Actually that's the only thing Greg and I ate all day. Water and granola bars and a little trail mix.

I swear you can almost see the curvature of the earth... haha jk

We tried all day to find flatter spots to stop but never found anything under a 35 degree grade. Have I mentioned a stair stepper before, cause that's what it felt like.

One of my favorite things was how the mountain just lite right up. Everything turned pink all around us.

John actually lost his helmet down in the big crevasse below, I don't think I've ever seen plastic slide so fast down a hill!

We made it!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

After 9 hours of climbing we finally made it to the top! 14, 410 ft.

Mt St. Helens in the background.

The caldera was huge and smoking around the edges. Still an active volcano!

Mt. Adams, Mt Hood in the distant middle way back, and Mt St Helens on the right.

Greg, Scott, and John

Taking a break on the way back down. Getting to the top was only the first part, we still had a 5 hour hike back downt to the tents. So tired!

On the way down we met up with this guy going up still

He totally had a snow board on his back and was planning on boarding the whole way down!

We were almost back to camp when all of a sudden my leg broke through the snow and whoosh! I was up to my hip on the ground. I had stepped in just the right spot. Right into a narrow crack in the ice. Luckily it was narrow, but it was deep... as I heard the snow fall into it and fall for a long time.

Back at camp we packed up the tent and our bags and headed down the mountain to the car.

We had one thing going for us though. No more glaciers! So we broke out sleeping pads, garbage bags, or whatever else you could slide on and took off down the mountain!

Greg sliding into oblivion!

This was my sliegh ride down.

We soon got off the ice fields and into trees as we decended the trail. The trees were covered in a very cool looking moss that hung from the branches. Very different then anything here in Utah.

We made it to the cars by 10:30 pm. That made for a 22 hour day. We were all so tired and worn out by the end.

It was an amazing trip though. Something I had never thought I'd ever do, but totally enjoyed it and never got too cold. I was definitly cold, but not like I have been here in Utah at times. We had a fun group and we all worked together to get to the top and conquer the mountain!

Greg and I are now heading off to Ecuador! Can't wait there is so much to do there and do many different climates! You have the amazon rain forest, then the capitol, Quito, at 9,000 ft in high tundra, then moutains and volcano's going up to 20,000 ft and don't forget the beaches. Greg will be there for 4 weeks, the first two doing research with school, then I will meet him there and stay for the next two weeks. So stay posted for more pictures of all the "crazy" things Greg and I do! I promise we'll have some good ones.