Mt Adams

Date: July 16^th 2006
Sent to washingtonclimbers@yahoogroups.com.
By Elaine Pruis
Photos here.

Last Saturday I headed down to Mt. Adams near the Columbia river to meet up with some rock climbing friends that have taken to mountaineering as a diversion. Mt Adams is Washington's second highest peak at 12,307 feet tall, yet there is a route up the mountain that avoids glaciers and their dangerous crevasses. Lots of people use Adams as their "training" mountain to get ready for Rainier.

I arrived at the campground near the trailhead at 5,500 feet after 5 hours of driving down forested roads, seems I am gaining lots of skills route finding in wilderness, but not on roads so much! I threw my sleeping bag down next to my car at 10:30 pm and set my alarm for 3am, hoping my friends would be able to pick me out of the mass of other people with the same brilliant plan. Eventually Kristian and Jerry showed up, they had blown a tire on the last horrid switchback approaching the camp, nothing to be done about it till the next day.

After a light sleep I got up at 3am and started to dress, it was warm and mild, so I went with the long underwear under the shorts outfit. We started hiking at a pretty brisk pace, but after about an hour stopped to discuss HAFE..... High Altitude Flatulance Expulsion. I'm not kidding, that is a real condition. And we had it! Bad! Jerry was really feeling the altitude at only 6,500 feet. He felt like s**t and decided to go back and get some more sleep, then fix the tire in town. Kristian and I put on our crampons, as we had reached the snow fields and it was only 4:30am, so the snow was pretty hard and slippery. We climbed steadily, taking a break every now and then to blow our noses. At about 8,000 feet the sun rose over the ridge, and so did the wind. It was about 50 degrees F in the sun, but only 30 degrees with the wind chill. We put on our gore-tex gear and sunscreen, slathering it everywhere except, I found out later, between my upper lip and the tip of my nose. I still look like Rudolph. Nothing hurts worse than wind-chapped, sun burnt nostrils! And I feel like I have boogers all over my nose, but it’s just my skin peeling off. About 10,000 feet I started to feel the altitude. My diaphragm started cramping from sucking air, and I felt light headed and woozy. I realized I hadn't eaten much but had been exerting myself for about, oh, 8 hours or so by then. I tried to suck down some Gatorade and thought for sure I would puke it out. But it stayed down so we continued on. At 11,000 feet we reached Piker's Peak. It is the false summit. In New Zealand I learnt a "piker" is someone who backs out of a social obligation, the worst faux pas possible in that country. I got to the ridge and hid behind a boulder. Ate a cliff bar, rested a bit, then screamed "I AM NOT A PIKER!! I WILL FINISH!". Unfortunately you have to drop about 100 feet from the false summit to start the climb up to the true summit. Kristian, who climbed Rainier and Baker in the last two weekends and was well acclimated, not feeling slow or woozy at all, took off like he was fresh out of the gate. I stumbled along behind, and realized he was in hot pursuit of a cute girl ahead. Eventually he stopped and waited for me, so I teased him about what his pickup line might be..."See that chick back there? She's not my girlfriend....?". He took it in stride, assuring me hiking with a married chick doesn't cramp his style, was very gracious and decided to climb behind me, encouraging me not to give up.

I would take twenty rest-steps, placing my crampons into the place that had been kicked in by the hundreds of climbers gone before me, then breathe 5 deep breaths. One of the things I like best about climbing is the social aspect, so I started asking K about his recent trip home to Sweden. He told me he and his family celebrated Mid-summer’s eve. So I asked him to sing me some songs from the celebrations. He sang a few lines, then translated... they went like this "the shot, the shot, we drink the shot, tra la la la" Very short and to the point. I promised him as long as he sang I would keep climbing. He came up with some haunting gypsy tune that pushed me up the last 200 feet (Kristian, sing this and send to me? ). Past a grandpa, parents and their pre-adolescent kids.  Amazing. Kristian literally sprinted to the top and finally admitted feeling a little winded. About 10 feet from the summit I stumbled on some crazy wind-blown ice formation and fell facing the sky. Luckily it was pretty flat there and not slippery, so I stuck. I decided I liked that place and wasn't going to move for a while. I became quite distressed after some time when people were passing by and nearly stepping over me, but not asking if I needed help! It wasn't Everest for Gsake!!! But I got over my self and stood up, and took 3 more steps and made the summit. Fantastic views of Rainier, right across the valley, all the way up to the mountains in my backyard. Beautiful. But finally, we've gotten to the best part of climbing Mt. Adams. After ascending in snow for 8 hours, we get to go down. And it's high noon, so the snow has melted enough that we can sit on our butts and slide down nearly 3,000 feet using our ice axes to steer, before standing up again!!!It was better than the water park I took the girls to last week. It took us 8 hours to climb up, and only 2 hours and 15 minutes to get back to the car.   Along the way we had some flat spots where we did standing glissades, and at one point I over-extended my knee.  Kristian rushed over, ready to re-locate my leg and haul me out on a toboggan, excellent ski patroller that he is.  Luckily I recovered quickly and he didn't have to build  a travois out of my hiking sticks and shredded pants.... since I shredded huge holes in the butt on some of the more frozen runs, but, my, How much Fun!!!