Several times this summer I have come home from a climb and told Eric about it, at which point he rolls his eyes and says, “Oh my god. You guys. You guys are a trainwreck.” I blame this dude:
Both of us have enjoyed a great climbing season this summer, but only as long as we are not climbing with each other. It is apparently the combination of me and him that is disastrous. See, we’ve gone on four climbs together:
- I didn’t even bother writing about our pitiful attempt at Whitehorse Mountain, a climb in which we were lost within fifty yards of leaving the car at 4 AM, a climb in which we were so far off the mark we didn’t even see the actual summit, a climb in which we had to descend through 2000 vertical feet of devil’s club thickets. We still talk about Whitehorse Mountain in hushed tones.
- Oh, and the whole reason we climbed Whitehorse Mountain was because we’d wanted to climb Sloan Peak, then found out the road was closed. And then a month later, we showed up to climb Sloan Peak and a dim little bulb went on somewhere in our heads and we just went ahead anyway.
- And we were both present on the Rainier climb, the one climb I thought disproved our trainwreck pattern because we actually reached the summit. But then Emily pointed out that only our rope team — because of course we tied into the same rope — got sick and no one else did.
Perhaps you can already see where this is going.
(This glacier wants to eat you.)
We took the Fisher Chimneys route up Mt. Shuksan, a route I’ve scheduled into my calendar twice this summer only to decide conditions weren’t right, or potential climbing partners weren’t right. I worried for months about this route, mostly about the climb up the chimneys themselves, which are not exactly difficult but are certainly rather exposed in places, and falling is generally not an option.
Saturday looked like this:
And then it looked like this:
And then the afternoon was pretty much like this:
Here is a section of the climb I didn’t like too much at all. I got scared at one point and yelled down to the rest of the group that I needed a few friendly words of encouragement (and maybe some help finding a good foothold). Emily yelled back, “Your butt looks awesome right now!” Good job, Emily. Good job, me.
Well, anyway! Then things fell apart. We completely overlooked getting a backcountry camping permit until we hiked up a closed road to the trailhead and saw the notice, then realized it would take a minimum of two hours to hike down to the car, drive into town, and then get back to the trailhead. And so we decided to chance it. And I should have known better, considering who else I was climbing with. Do you see the snow in the left of this picture?
That is the White Salmon Glacier. And that is the only picture I got of it, because as soon as we stepped foot on it, we were informed by a particularly surly law enforcement park ranger that we had to turn back around. And climb back down what we’d just climbed up. With about twenty minutes of daylight left, once we refilled our water bottles. And that’s how six of us wound up crammed onto a little sloped ledge in the middle of the Fisher Chimneys! Renegades! I kept trying to slide off the cliff during the rare moments I actually fell asleep that night, and I had a lot of intense, flinchy dreams about falling. Thank goodness someone had the good sense to pack a bottle of wine.
On the other hand, here’s the view from our nest the next morning, looking across to Mt. Baker:
And then we hiked out!
Good climb, everyone! I am never climbing with any of you ever again!
