Last winter, Eric and I went for a walk after brunch on an uncharacteristically sunny Seattle day. We paused on a bridge to marvel at a perfect view of Mt. Rainier, and I sighed and said I sure would like to be able to climb that thing one day. “Oh!” said Eric, “That’s pretty much what the basic class prepares you to do!”
My plan was to spend some time climbing some slightly smaller mountains over the next month or so, and really concentrate on getting into good shape for the big climb in mid-July. But then last week, I got a text message from a friend saying it was his only open weekend until August, and did I want to climb Rainier? Immediately?
On Saturday morning, I left the car with a pack that was probably around 40 pounds, and clambered up the Inter Glacier and the Emmons Glacier, finally reaching our camp at Emmons Flats, a little below 10,000 feet.
Eric had told me about this awesome serac a couple of months ago, and how it slid a mile and a half down the glacier. And then I got to camp and it was RIGHT THERE! We wanted to climb on it but it turned out that the reason it stopped careening down the mountain was that it was firmly lodged in a huge crevasse. And we were not roped together. Oops.
I forgot my spoon and had to eat dinner with a tent stake. At this point, I would like to point out, I am having a pretty good time! Well. That is about to change.
I slept zero hours that night, a combination of the altitude and anxiety about what was to come on summit day. Or summit night, really, because we were up at 11:30 pm with our headlamps, ready to start climbing up the Emmons Glacier in the dark. All three of the people on my rope team got so sick we thought we might need to turn around to make sure we could get down safely. Here I am shortly after sunrise, reassessing my life and where I have gone wrong with it, that I have ended up here, shivering uncontrollably and wanting to throw up (as one teammate already did):
We decided to go up over the next little bulge and re-assess, and… oh! Hey, that’s the summit right there! Let’s get up there where we can curl up in the fetal position and gnaw on frozen gummy worms for awhile!
Oh, but the descent. The descent was yet to come. After climbing up 4400 feet, we had a full 10,000 feet to descend back to the car. And I will admit it here: I cried on this climb. With 1000 feet of descent yet to go, after hours of slipping in slushy snow with a heavy pack and twisting ankles and banging knees clambering over trees and losing a gaiter in a glissade and losing the trail and becoming utterly incoherent due to sleep deprivation, I finally cried. Just a little. No one saw me. When we got to the car, I peeled off my boots and winced at the massive blisters on my heels, thanks to twelve hours of wearing crampons. And then also a toenail fell off.
THING #3: DONE. (10/101)
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