14,410 feet, WA - Mount Rainier

Ring, ring..."Michael I think the weather is looking good mid-week, think you can get a day or two and we'll take a run on Rainier?" Sure thing Michael said and we met up Wednesday morning to head out for our climb with the plan to have Michael back at home Thursday evening. As you can see from the pictures, the weather was perfect and the climb went without a hitch. We tried to go light but one can never tell on a 14,000+ ft peak what will happen so regardless we still had relatively large packs. The one thing that Michael stressed was taking the most casual pace to the base camp at Ingram Flats ~11,000 ft to minimize lactic acid build-up in the legs and provide us with the best option to summit the next morning. We got our permits from the Paradise Visitor Center Ranger Station (~5,500 ft) and around 11:30am started our slow ascent to high camp. Our first goal would be Camp Muir at ~ 10,000 ft and Michael reeled me in more than once to slow my pace. Every 1000 ft we drank and then alternated having a small snack or bite every other 1000 ft. It worked well and when we reached Camp Muir I was not feeling the least bit tired. We munched a bit more and continued on this time roped up due to the crevasse danger on the Cowlitz Glacier after Camp Muir. We also dawned our helmets to minimize getting pinged by small rock fall from the wall before Ingram Flats.

Wild flowers and ideal weather

Michael ready to roll

"Smallish" packs & a Coke to get stashed in Pebble Creek - cold & refreshing for the way down

Let's get serious

Passing Pebble Creek - we also stashed our approach shoes here and went to plastics

Michael pacing the Muir Snowfield

Boot penetration wasn't too bad but it was hot in the noon sun

Cathedral Gap - below this section sits the Cowlitz Glacier which is just above Camp Muir

Arriving at Ingram Flats ~11,000 ft

Home sweet home and time to get in our bivi sacs

Michael was chef and head water boiler

Looking down at camp from higher up the Ingram

We awoke a couple of times and watched the line of headlamps from the RMI guided group coming up the Ingram like a train of ants. That was about 2am. We got up around 5am with the sun and decided to pack our camp in a hole we dug in the snow in case it got windy. The ascent was event less and we made the summit by 9ish. After a few pictures and exploration we made a fast descent and caught the RMI group before DC. When we reached camp Michael had a bit of a dehydration headache so he built a shade shelter, Tylenol'd up and had a nappy while I prepped food for a refuel and our eventual departure for Paradise.

Sunrise comes early

Not a super early start but we'll move fast!

Getting on to Disappointment Clever

A nice view of Mt. Adams from the top of Disappointment Clever ~12,300 ft

Coming up the trough/climbers path

Feeling strong and keeping up a good pace

Crevasse obstacles and objective dangers - note that snow bridges fail in warm weather

Another party assessing the crevasse

...and on and on it goes...the air thinning all the time

Finally we are in the summit crater and heading to the summit high point ~1/4 mile across the crater

The Columbia Crest on the western rim is the true summit

The highest man in Washington State - 14,410 feet

On the way down we caught up and passed the large RMI party

Back at Ingram - nappy time while I made soup and tea

Our final descent was made all that much better when we recovered those icy cold Cokes from Pebble Creek and swapped our heavy boots for approach shoes. We had gone from Seattle to the summit in under 24 hours and back down to the car in about 27 hours round trip. Great trip, thanks Michael!