Second Ascent

The idea for this trip started the previous summer. That is how far out that you have to plan when you are working adults with families. Brian Hays had been my hiking and mountain climbing buddy since we were in high school. During our adult years, though, the trips became more sporadic after our one summer of working in Zion together until finally they dissipated altogether. This was due to a few reasons. One was that we were never again living in the same place at the same time. The second was that Brian's focus was always directed toward something bigger than what I felt the need to endure. Third, of course, is that he had a network of contacts closer to him that would do many of these trips that seemed more interesting to him. I knew all of these things already, so when I called him after the summer of 2018, I thought it might be a long shot.

I wanted to see if he wanted to go on a peak bagging trip where we traveled up the West Coast and climbed some mountains along the way. I felt that the summer of 2018 had been a great summer for me, but it lacked some mountain climbing. I have always trusted Brian as a hiking partner because no matter the situation, he seems to take the lead because he sees himself as the most competent to do that. He was hesitant at first because he had a trip to the Bugaboos in Canada planned out for that summer and it would be hard for him to take off too much time from work. I put the idea out of mind until a few months later, he seemed to change his tune. This time, though, the trip had morphed into climbing Mt. Rainier.  Every time I had mentioned doing anything in the Northwest, this is what Brian had always said he wanted to do. I had climbed Mt. Rainier at 20 years old when I was in college at the University of Washington. It had been a great experience, but honestly it was not one I was looking forward to repeating. What I remembered most was being exhausted from a lack of sleep, having issues with the altitude, and trying really hard to not fall given my lack of experience with glacial travel.

It would be interesting to me to see how the older, more experienced me of 2019 would compare to the younger, more ambitious 20 year old. I still tried to talk him into another trip that having a friend that was experienced in mountaineering would be great to have along like Mt. Olympus, but his sights were set on Mt. Rainier followed up by a trip to Forbidden Peak in the North Cascades. Forbidden Peak was definitely out of my comfort zone, so I declined that opportunity (if I was even invited), but made plans to climb Rainier. He was going to also bring along his wife Angela, which was awesome. She is also an experienced mountaineer and just as intense as Brian is when it comes to these sorts of trips. I had not personally done more than just day hike with her, but I know that she had climbed some pretty impressive peaks in the Tetons and other places.

As the day drew nearer, it became less obvious that the climb would actually happen. Typically, when you plan a trip of this magnitude, something falls through with logistics before the trip actually happens. That was not going to be the issue though. Brian and Angela had bought their tickets already. The date was scheduled for the beginning of July. I had taken a whole extra bag of gear in our small Honda Fit full of climbing gear just to make this happen. The issue was the weather. Having arrived in Western Washington a week earlier, I knew that the weather had been pretty unpredictable. It was a wet, cold summer so far and looking at the forecast, the window for the climb would be pretty small. Any changes of a few hours could impact our climb. Still, as the day got closer, there was that small window of time.
Brian and Angela showed up at my mom's house the night before the climb at a little after midnight, so they were both pretty tired the next morning when I saw them. You couldn't tell, though, because they were both ready for the attempt. We spoke a bit about the weather, but Brian thought the window looked good. Instead we ate a good breakfast and went through gear before packing up and heading out. I hugged Jacqueline and the kids before I left and the expedition had begun. We took Brian and Angela's rental car up to the Park. Along the way, I got to point out many of the places from where I grew up. They both seemed impressed with the Northwest with its large trees, abundant water, and cool summer days. We never had a view of the Mountain driving up which was unfortunate, but not surprising.
We got to Paradise in the early afternoon. The first thing we had to do was to get ourselves a climbing permit. Brian had got a backcountry permit from a climbing ranger that he had met in Canyonlands where he was an instructor at the Basic Search and Rescue Training Course. We would not be seeing this contact that he had on this trip, but because of that, we were going to get the hookup with some climbing and camping gear halfway up the mountain at Camp Muir. We debated whether we needed to get the climbing permit also, but I went with yes. Even though the cost was pretty expensive of $50 a person, I still thought it the correct thing to do. When we met up with the backcountry ranger there, he seemed to think we needed it also. Brian and Angela were both a bit upset about this, but I was happy to do it. It did take a good chunk of time, though.
Finally, we were prepared to set out at about 1:30 in the afternoon. I knew that the beginning of the trail was all on pavement, so I left my mountaineering boots in the backpack and headed out in my running shoes. I was glad I did because I felt like I needed to run to keep up with Brian and Angela. Both of them seemed to feel the need to go fast up the mountain. I consider myself in pretty good shape, but I was sweating a bunch trying to keep up with them as we fought the mists of July. We still could not see the mountain even when we were on it. We eventually made it to the place where wearing running shoes was a bad idea, so I threw on the boots. Having gone up to High Rock with Jacqueline just a few days earlier, I knew that the climbing boots were going to slow me down, due to the fact that they had shrunk and were a little too small. They also were just heavy, so as we hit the snowfields below Camp Muir, Brian and Angela were well out in front of me. I still was not slow, though, as we made it to Muir in a little over 3 hours, but I just wasn't as quick as they were.

When we got to Muir, this is where the perks of park service life kicked in. Brian eventually found the rangers there who were busy with poo flying operations. Having come up a couple of times with my dad to Camp Muir when I was a child, I knew all about the poo operations here. He got us some gear and later hobnobbed with the rangers. I did not say much because there was not much for me to say. I realized now how disconnected I was from Park Service life and the experiences that come with it. Most of our evening was taken up with melting snow for water the next day, but we got ourselves fed and settled in to our three person tent for the night.

Everything had gone great up until here. We had placed our tent at the end of the camp area, so there was not many people close to us. It seemed like most of the camp was settling in, so as we got into our tent to try to get a few hours of shut eye before the early morning wake up, we did not expect to have a rough evening.

But, right as we were trying to sleep, another group of young guys arrived at Camp Muir and started to set up their tents right next to where I was laying my head for the night. You would think that if you came in late, that you would be respectful of those around you. Instead, these guys could not stop talking about the stupidest things. I did my best to lay there quietly and try to sleep, but they were loud until after 10 pm which unfortunately was the time when other groups were waking up to begin the ascent. This was sort of shocking to all of us. We knew that people were getting up early to do the climb, but this was ridiculous.

For the entire night, there was constant noise in camp until finally at 12:30 in the morning Brian said we should just go because we would end up getting stuck behind other groups the entire day if we didn't. Our goal was to leave an hour or so later, but given that we were not getting much sleep, this was forgotten. Angela, fortunately, had been sleeping, but was okay with the earlier start. We got all geared up with crampons, ice axes, and tied into the rope. Brian would lead, Angela next, with me bringing up the rear. I was happy to see Brian start out kind of slow. The pace he was keeping was actually perfect until we got behind our first group. I could not believe how slowly some of these groups were moving.

We had to continuously find ways to pass other groups before getting on Disappointment Cleaver where we would get stuck behind others. Still, the pace did not seem too fast which I was pretty happy about. We moved quickly and carefully up the mountain passing many places where we would be on snow and then switch over to rock again. The crampons got pretty beat up on the volcanic rock, but it would have been a pain to take them on and off up the whole mountain. Eventually we made it past the Cleaver and Ingraham Flats to where the peak started to get steeper. To me, it seemed pretty easy to just keep my head down and follow the blue line that was the rope in front of me as Brian got the job of finding the correct route. Most of the time, it was not difficult, though, because it was mostly a highway up to the top. There was always the potential for danger as there were two spots where fixed lines were in place, but there was never a point where I felt uncomfortable with the risk as long as I did not lose my footing. My 38 year old body was doing pretty good and kicking my 20 year old butt with dealing with altitude until about 14,000 feet.

Then, I started to need a few catch my breath breaks, but it wasn't too long before we got to the Crater where we could unrope. Because of this, I don't think I became irritating to Brian and Angela, though I could tell that any stops were a bit of a let down. You don't want to be that guy. They made it up to the summit a bit faster than I did, but we both got to enjoy the amazing view which we were lucky enough to have completely clear skies. The weather had been ideal without even a trace of wind as we climbed. I considered us very lucky. We also had the summit mostly to ourselves given that we had passed 95% of the other groups on the way up. The ascent had only taken us about 5 hours and we were standing on Columbia Crest at 6 am. We enjoyed it for some time as you could see so many of the Cascade Peaks clearly on this day, but soon it was time to pass by the fumaroles and back to our gear to begin the descent.

Leaving the summit crater was actually the most challenging part of the descent given that there was a stream of other climbers making their way up while we were finding our way down. We had to get creative with our route choice leaving the established path in many steep places to get around these other groups. I was definitely the slow one on the descent, constantly feeling the pull of the rope. I am not sure who was initiating these pulls, but I was going as fast as I felt comfortable going. Hiking in crampons and large mountaineering boots was not something that I did daily, so I felt the need to be careful with my foot placement given that a slip meant a slide down the glacier with potential for injury or worse. Still the Hays group had this drive to go much faster. At one point, I had to remind them that we were doing just fine on time given that it was still only 7:30 in the morning. It all came to a head at the Flats when I fell on my face in front of another group trying to keep up with them. I saw the chuckle on Brian's face when it happened, but it was obviously frustrating for me. I am sure that I was frustrating them also with Angela being the happiest person to be off the rope at Camp Muir being the middle person between one person who wanted to go faster and another that wanted to go slower.

We made it back to Camp Muir at 9:00 in the morning. This is where we could finally feel like we had done it. One thing Brian had said to mock the people who were waking up at 10 or 11 pm to begin the ascent was that this was only Mt. Rainier and not K2 or Everest, but for me I did feel pretty accomplished having climbed this mountain again. This was an experience I was glad to have. Even though the rock was terrible and I was exhausted from a lack of sleep, I would not trade the experience away for anything. Did I want to do it again the next day? Heck no. I can't say that climbing Mt. Rainier itself is that enjoyable of an experience, but being there on the mountain is such a different experience from what I do every day that I sure appreciated it.

We rested for a while at Camp Muir, or rather, Brian and Angela rested. I was not about to fall asleep, because there was this impending large storm on the way. It took a decent amount of time to dig the tent out of the snow, but eventually we got ourselves packed up to head down. I was definitely a slow poke on the way down given that my feet were hurting from the mountaineering boots. If this was a more frequent experience, I would buy another pair of boots. Given that they cost 2-300 dollars, I was happy using these even if they were painful. We did do some butt sliding down and the Hays even ran into a friend of theirs from their Rocky Mountain days who was heading up to Camp Muir where unfortunately for him, he got to endure the weather that we missed with sleet and high winds. We were back to the parking lot about 24 hours after we left it with another amazing mountaineering experience under our belt. They were both amazed at the immensity of the mountain as we could actually see it on the way down. Brian dreampt of future expeditions up other routes that I would not be joining him on. It was interesting seeing our interest in the outdoors had truly diverged. I was always interested in going somewhere new, yet not technically challenging whereas Brian seemed focused on those things that pushed his limits. Given that Brian's limits were much higher than mine, I knew that there were unfortunately not many future trips in store for us.

We made the most of this one though getting back to my wife and kids staying at my mom's house in Eatonville. We had dinner out and then got some decent sleep before having to leave the next morning to go up to the North Cascades. They were climbing Forbidden Peak, while I was meeting up with my dad for a backpacking trip. He gave me a ride up where we were able to discuss much of what had been going on in our lives. I will always consider Brian a great friend and I feel like he met the exact right person for him by marrying Angela. I appreciated that they spent some of there short vacation with me and I was happy to be able to get a second ascent of a peak that meant a lot to me having grown up in the shadows of Mt. Rainier. Who knew when the next trip would be for us, but hopefully we can eventually meet in the middle again to find another exciting future adventure.