Besides Karl and me, our climbing crew consisted of our friends Mike, Brooke, and Paul. We flew into Seattle, where we stayed with Mike and Brooke one night and did some sightseeing. Then we were off to Mt. Rainier National Park. After having been squeezed into a little truck for four hours, we were all ready to head up the mountain. Despite a late start, the scenery was beautiful, and after getting used to the weight on our backs, we were having a great time.
Because of our late start we had not quite made it to Camp Muir before dark and so we stayed in another fun place in the snow and dug out our tent sites. Freezing? Yes. Still fun? Yes. Well, kind of.
Karl in his element
Our goal was clearly in sight when we woke up.
But I really liked this peak (Little tahoma), too.
The next morning was beautiful and after melting snow (which turned out to be our second most frequent activity besides hiking), we went out to finally conquer Camp Muir and did so in only a few hours. Lunch break and off we are again to our second base camp, Ingraham Flats. Now we had the pleasure of roping up as a team and getting onto the glaciers. Yeah, that is what we had all been waiting for and so the real fun was about to start: crampons, helmet, rope, harness, rockfall, crevasses and lots of other things which names I can't remember. But this is what it looked like
Ingraham Flats - and yes, there is a big crevasse pretty much right next to our tent but it was not as scary as it might seem. However, it was even colder than it seems.
Brooke decided to stay behind and so the rest of us left for the summit at 2 am. Trying to avoid a billion crevasses in the dark was not as scary as I had anticipated, thanks to the well-formed trail ahead of us and so just hiked and hiked and hiked. It went slower and slower and slower because the oxygen was getting really low now and our muscles were tired. We all made it to the top at 9 am and here we are.
When we finally made it back to base camp at 3 pm, Brooke was very relieved to see us all alive. She had a rather disturbing morning due to frequent avalanches near her and heavy rockfall, so she was happy to finally get out of there. We had some more curry and rice started a very long hike back to our car which we did not reach until 9 pm that night. We took a couple of more pictures of us and "our" mountain but for more we were simply too tired.
It was a great adventure and now we are all proud owners of green Nalgenes that say: "Mount Rainier 14,410". And what can beat that?
No comments:
Post a Comment