Mount Rainier — Get to the Wall!

In the days leading up to Christmas I received a package from Oregon.  Inside was a book from Tawk Press called “Seeds of …”  It is a compilation by Mary Jane Nordgren of short stories related to the Pacific Northwest and the first story was the one I wrote about climbing Mt. Rainier in 2000:

“Get to the wall! Get to the wall!”

These were the first words gushing out of my father’s mouth as the glacier we were sitting on at 12,000 feet began to groan.  Luckily, this is all that the glacier did.  We had just traversed across an eight-inch wide ledge with a five hundred foot drop to our right and were taking a rest where the ledge had widened to ten feet.  If the glacier had let loose, we had no place to go.  We were stuck on this ledge high up on Mt. Rainier, 2½ miles above the rest of the world.

This expedition began as a thought in my father’s mind when he was climbing Mt. Rainier twenty years earlier.  As he was climbing, he met a father climbing with his son and decided then and there that if he had the opportunity, he would climb Mt. Rainier with his future son, me.  As I was growing up, I also developed an interest in climbing that has taken me to the summits of Mt. Fuji twice, Mt. St. Helens, Half Dome, and six others.  Finally, during the summer of 2000, our plans complete, we journeyed to Seattle and then on to Mt. Rainier, the jewel of the Pacific Northwest.

On a chilly July morning, just after daybreak, we set out from Paradise Lodge with four of our climbing buddies and began our ascent of Mt. Rainier.  We trekked nearly eight hours and over 5,000 vertical feet with our sixty-pound packs before arriving at Camp Muir.  This was our base camp.  We spent the next thirty hours acclimating ourselves to the altitude, replenishing our bodies, and catching up on needed rest.  At midnight, we arose to prepare ourselves for the summit attempt.  With the temperature hovering at minus ten degrees, it was hard to believe that summer was just seventy miles away in Seattle.  We prepared breakfast over propane burners that emitted flames and sounds that mimicked a small jet engine.  Then it was time – the summit awaited us.  We donned our insulated boots, long johns, gloves, vests, crampons, harnesses, headlamps, and parkas.  Finally, at two a.m., we were roped up and began our final ascent with millions of stars shimmering all around us.

The trail we were to follow was very dangerous due to the lateness of the season.  Many new crevasses had formed, some of them hidden below snow bridges making them extremely hazardous.  The width of one crevasse forced the trail to snake a half mile out of its way just to find a place to cross.  However, even here it was treacherous, for we had to belay across a horizontal ladder that served as a 15 foot bridge over a void whose icy blue walls disappeared into inky blackness hundreds of feet below us.  A football field, stood on end, could have been completely entombed in the darkness below us.

Another crevasse was also the reason we were on a ledge when the glacier began to groan and electrify us with a huge dose of adrenaline.  It was monstrous, and stretched horizontally for nearly a mile all the way to the backside of the mountain.  There was no way to traverse it – we had to go around it.  We skirted the mountain nearly 180 degrees before it was possible to continue our ascent.

The last 2,400 feet would prove to be the most demanding of the ascent.  This is when we were the most fatigued; altitude sickness was affecting some of us, and a storm had rolled in.  However, we trudged into the blustering winds one step at a time, pausing between each step to take a breath.  Our visibility in the driving wind and fog had become nearly nonexistent due to the whiteout conditions we encountered as we approached the summit.  The ends of our rope disappeared into the whiteness as the clouds swallowed the others on the rope.  Communication was reduced to tugs on the rope and occasional sputtering static from my two-way radio.

As we neared the summit, we encountered descending climbers who gave us encouragement by indicating the summit was just beyond an approaching ridge.  Then, suddenly, we had made it!  We could no longer go any higher.  We were standing at one of the highest points in the continental United States contemplating and congratulating each other on what we had just accomplished. I was tired, but felt great because I had just accomplished a very difficult feat that I will cherish for the rest of my life.  The memories of the climb will always be with me, and I hope someday to have the opportunity to return to the summit with a son of my own.

~ by Rob Page III on January 6, 2011.