Mt Rainier
Date: July 1st-2nd 2006
Sent to washingtonclimbers@yahoogroups.com.
By: Kristian Andaker
Photos from this and other trips up Mt Rainier here.
I once remember making the decision that I was done with Mount Rainier. But it turns out it is impossible to say 'no' when you see the sparkling eyes of Alex and Jess as they speak about climbing adventures.
Three weeks ago Alex, Jess and I went up Monte Cristo. We had an amazing time and although I was going away for three weeks to Boston and Sweden we immediately scheduled another mountaineering expedition for the day I would return. Alex and Jess were doing the planning and I gave them a blank check on which they could pencil in any peak they'd fancy. I expected them to come up with something challenging. But Alex still managed to surprise me when he said "we are leaving for Mount Rainier tonight" as I called him while I was waiting for my baggage at SeaTac. I had expected something slightly less intimidating.
3 hours later we were packing the Crag Camaro with climbing gear and around 8.30pm we headed out from Redmond. At South Center Mall we intercepted Molly and Jess who were on their way home from a successful Adams climb and picked up Jess. Apparently Jess felt that a one day ascent + descent of Adams was the perfect warm-up for two days on Rainier. Do I need to add that she is one crazy girl?
The drive to Paradise (5000ft base camp on Mt Rainier) went without hiccups. Alex had to take over the steering wheel after some time because I was passing out from Jetlag. Jess took a nap in the back to gain a few recovery minutes from the Adams adventure. We reached Paradise around 1am and went to sleep under the stars by the car. In the morning we got up, went to get the climbing permit and were off.
We had our sights set on the Kautz Cleaver route, which takes you quite far to the west of Camp Muir. In getting to the 10200ft camp site we traversed over the Nisqually Glacier, up snow fields covered in sun/rock holes up to 10ft in diameter, over the Wilson Glacier, over the Van Trump Glaciers, up along the Wapowety Cleaver and finally up the lower half of the Kautz Glacier. During the entire day after leaving the paradise hiking trails we only crossed paths with 3 other teams and as we camped we had the glacier to ourselves. We pitched the tent around 4pm. The views were amazing and except for the wind exposure our camp site was perfect. We spent some time planning the summit attempt. The Kautz Cleaver which we were aiming for looked completely impossible. The cleaver must be covered in snow to be passable, but we must have been there too late in the season because the cleaver was almost snow free. To find an alternative route we started looking at a steep glacier with an ice chute in the middle a little to the right of the cleaver. The map told us that was the "Kautz Chute" and after seeing three people spend 2 hours to down-climb it, we figured it was something to consider. We cooked some warm nourishing noodle-chicken-tune soup and then pasta-chicken-salmon meals for lunch/dinner and then we passed out with the alarm clock set for 2am.
To do the "Kautz Glacier" route, including the "Kautz Chute", people typically camp farther to the east than our location. To get back on track for the new route we had selected, Jess led us up the new "Jessica Drees Direct" route, going up a band of thin and steep snowfields on the west side of the Wapowety Cleaver. Jess was placing pickets every 25 meters as we walked higher and the sun started making an appearance. After a few hours we crossed over onto the Kautz Glacier and around 5.30am we were at the base of the Kautz Chute. Another party was just leaving up the ice wall and we spent the first 20 minutes there trying to avoid the big chunks of ice that were coming down from them as they sunk their ice axes into the wall. Once the passage was clear we evaluated the situation. We had a 30m rope, one person with ice climbing experience (Jess), two happy beginners, two ice screws, three ice climbing axes and three glacier travel axes. The wall was ~65-70 degree hard ice and perhaps 40m high to the point where it started leveling off and become a snow field. I'm not sure how we settled on the idea of going up, but that's what happened, despite a few comments about how the 2006 version of “Accidents in North American Mountaineering” would label our trip if something went wrong. Jess led with nerves of steel and placed the first screw about 10m up. The second screw went in at 25m when Alex and I hooked into the rope and started simu-climbing as Jess continued. I wonder how many ice climbers have started their careers with a three person, marginally protected simul-climb at 12000ft... Jess kept leading us up and gained the snow field as Alex removed the bottom ice screw. For a few meters there was only one ice screw protecting the rope and when the screw came out we had a few meters of hoping that two pickets would hold us in the event of a mishap. I have never had a stronger sense that falling was not an option. As we reached the snow field Jess got hugs and handshakes for an impressive lead as we all started breathing again.
From the Chute we went across the upper portion of the Kautz Glacier towards the summit crater. There were plenty of open crevasses and the thin air started slowing us down as we crossed 12500ft. Until this point we had blue skies with sporadic clouds, but now we were walking into thick fog. At the same time the GPS started complaining about low batteries. Since navigational aids are nice to have around when walking into white-out conditions we sacrificed the camera batteries for the GPS and the photo trail of the expedition ended here. On our way up we met two teams on their way down. They had both turned back around 13500ft-14000ft and complained of lousy visibility and strong winds in the white soup higher up. This sparked doubts in us, but we had a tricky choice to make: turning back and trying to get down the 40m Kautz Chute with our 30 meter rope, not an appealing proposition, or continuing to the crater to take the safer and easier Disappointment Cleaver (DC) route down on the other side of the mountain as originally planned. As we headed on we could see less and less of our surroundings. As the wind was howling the snow under our feet turned into wind shaped ice and our visibility went down to the point where we could barely see one another, surrounded by an impenetrable white bubble covering the rest of the world. We walked on ever upwards with slow steps and labored breathing. Suddenly three silhouettes appeared in front of us in the white-out. It was three fellow climbers with the same goal we had: up to the crater and over to the DC route. We were encouraged to find company, but after only a few minutes we got separated as they kept a pace slightly higher than ours and they didn't have to get more than 30 meters away before the fog swallowed them completely. After another half hour another set of human shapes materialized from the void in front of us. They were on their way down some other route and just brushed past without time to chit chat. It wasn't more than 30 seconds from the time they appeared until they had disappeared again behind us.
Around 11am we reached the west side of the summit crater. We started walking along the crater and the GPS was telling us we were at around 14400ft so at some point we crossed the summit without realizing exactly when. We couldn't see the features in the ice beyond 15ft though and at this point we had switched from worrying about the summit and gone into survival mode: we wanted to find the way down.
The crater edge offered fierce wind which almost knocked us over, but we stayed on it as we walked south and east. For a few minutes we found rest from the wind in a surreal Steam Vent along the crater edge. The steam was coming up through a 10ft diameter tunnel in the ice and we took a breather by the opening where the heat from the vent had carved out a hole in the ice big enough to host a nice wind-shielded camp site where we could have pitched the tent if need be.
At this point all our energy was bent on finding the DC route down. We headed out from the safety of the vent and followed the crater for another half hour before we literally stumbled across the well-trampled climber’s path leading down towards the east and the Disappointment Cleaver. Seeing the wands of the DC freeway lifted our spirits and we started down with light feet. We zigzagged our way down the upper part of the Emmons Glacier and jumped over a few crevasses as our team mates secured with ice axes and pickets. Before long we were walking the snow switchbacks down the Disappointment Cleaver, enjoying the early season snow covering all the painful rock scree the DC offers in August. As we cleared the cleaver we crossed Ingraham Flats, walked through the rock and dust of Cadaver Gap and finally crossed the Cowlitz Glacier before slouching into Camp Muir on tired feet but with big smiles. We spent half an hour recuperating in the camp, leeching off fellow climber's food and exchanging climbing stories before casually walking down the Muir snow field to Paradise again. As we were walking down we watched with mixed emotions how the clouds were lifting from the summit and the zone where we had stumbled around blindly turned into the kind of clear sun bathed wonderland we would have killed for a few hours before.
Next time we'll bring better summit weather, more ice screws and a longer rope.