Mount Rainier (King of the Cascades)

Like Mount Everest on a 49% scale, Mount Rainier is a place of historical significance.  Many of the greatest pioneering climbers and expedition leaders in U.S. history were trained on the slopes of this spectacular volcano.  Jim Whitaker and Lou Whitaker found their start there.  So did Jim Wickwire, Willie Unsoeld, Tom Hornbein, Barry Bishop, Larry Neilson, John Roskelly, Marty Hoey, Phil Ershler, George Dunn, and Fred Becky.  Following in their giant footprints were Scott Erickson, Scott Fisher, Ed Visteurs - the list is long. 

I know my place in the mountains, and a solo ascent of Mount Rainier was way over my head in every sense.  Nevertheless, in recent years I had tried to keep up the same attitude in life, as in climbing mountains:

1) LOOK AHEAD only a short ways. 

2) VISUALIZE the route in advance.

3) CHALLENGE YOURSELF in choosing a goal far above your natural capabilities.  Once you reach it, move on to another, and another: push past the risk and pain.  Only when you absolutely have to, pause for a rest and a new perspective (a trip to the ocean with a gang of kids, perhaps). 

I started out from Camp Muir one morning hoping to celebrate my birthday at Columbia Crest, as I once had atop Mount Adams.  It would be the greatest moment of my life to reach the top of Rainier the next day.  I had to be extremely careful, though, and use all of my experience, or I might not live to see another day - much less year.  Sure enough, the birthday party was not to be had that day.  Not all things work out just so. 

The sheer ferocity of a lenticular cloud wailing over the summit turned me around, as I was half way up Disappointment Cleaver.  If the tempest continued, I would only end up in a whiteout on the most dangerous part of the route.  Even if I did make the summit, it would be a fantastically great risk.  And then what about the descent?  There was a fair possibility that if I went for the top, I might not make it back down alive.  I still wondered if I was being too timid about this?  No, I'm not!

Rainier had given me an extremely cold welcome - I had been soundly defeated.  That would be my first and last solo attempt on the peak . . . five of the six volcanoes, solo, would have to do.  The score was Mount Rainier 1, Glenn 0.

As I approached Camp Muir exactly 72 hours later, the wind seemed to find its way into every bit of loose clothing on me.  It was all I could do to stay on my feet, even there.  I turned around, descended to "Paradise," signed out at the ranger station and drove home.  That would be my last solo try on Rainier - for sure.  I meant it this time.  I had had enough. 
Mount Rainier 2, Glenn 0. 

Two days later I drove to the entrance of Mount Rainier National Park, loaded for bar.  There I sat and looked up at a cloud cap hovering over the summit dome; the same one that had already twice turned me around.  The cloud really didn't look so bad through the windshield of my car, but when I got out and took an unobstructed look, it did.  The question was: did I want to pay another $5 to enter the Park again, if I couldn't get to Columbia Crest?  No. Three bucks maybe, but not five. 

Would I so easily be defeated without even setting foot inside the Park, much less upon the mountain itself?  Yes, you had better believe it.  I turned around and drove home, deciding that I wouldn't ever be going back for another try.  Enough of Mount Rainier.  No mas! 
Mount Rainier 3, Glenn 0.

A few days later the weather appeared to be on the mend.  I was even able to spot the summit of the volcano through the front window of my home in Woodinville, Washington, standing tall above a puffy layer of clouds; blood red in light of the setting sun.  The storm had passed.  Opportunity was at hand.

The night enveloped me as I lay shivering and frightened under the vast expanse of the Milky Way.  Clouds of stars filled the sky as Little Tahoma cast an evil shadow over the glacier.  Off to my left Mount Rainier's summit dome loomed menacingly - my host for the night, my nemesis and the object of my utmost hate, love, fear and obsession, waiting for me up there.  For the time being though, I could lie in complete abandon and soak up this super alpine experience for all it was worth. 

Day had turned to night and then to day again at the passing of the midnight hour.  I emerged in hot waves from a state of semi sleep when my travel alarm clock rang its unfriendly tune.  Drenched in perspiration as I came to, more than ever, this time, I did not want to get out of  bed.  But when I heard the clanking of ice axes over on Disappointment Cleaver ("Beaver Cleaver"), I knew from experience that the best way to keep from talking myself out of this one was to get up quickly.

There was really nothing left for me to do but start climbing, and so I headed out onto the glacier.  I tried to keep in mind that just as one can drown in only a few inches of water in a bathtub, a fall of only 10 feet can be just as lethal as one of 1,000 feet.  It's all the same past a certain point.  At the 13,000' level of Mount Rainier I paused to catch my breath and watch the sun rise over the deserts of Eastern Washington.  Morning light swept down and onto the remainder of the State in one rush.  All the way to sea level it went; a thousand square miles illuminated in one flashbulb instant.  I wish everyone could have such an experience - it would make for fewer wars around the globe. 

Just over four hours after leaving my campsite on the Ingraham Glacier I reached the edge of Mount Rainier's East Crater. With little more than a minute's pause there I continued across the basin toward the true summit at Columbia Crest.  Outside the crater the wind was freezing cold, and yet not far inside it became boiling hot, due to the sun's reflection off the snow.  The deeper into the basin I went the higher the temperature rose, until it hit 103 degrees according to a tiny thermometer dangling from a string on my day pack.  I thought it ironic that I was sweating profusely again, there at the base of a short slope of pumice leading to the highest point of the volcano - at 14,411 feet above sea level. 

Sulfur dioxide poured from fissures in the soft brown pumice, adding a colorful touch to these final moments of the climb.  All in the course of ten steps up the other side of the crater, I went from the frying pan to the freezer again as the wind chilled me vigorously.  Hot cold hot cold hot cold hot cold hot.  And then cold again.  Whew!  It couldn't get any better than this.

A hundred more steps and you've got it, I thought.  You've done it then.  Off to one side I caught a brief glimpse of Mount Baker in the distance - with Mount Pilchuck positioned squarely between the two volcanoes.  To my right was Mount Adams in all its glory: the circle was about to be closed.  Step, step, inhale, step, step, exhale, step, step, inhale, step, step, exhale, step, step inhale.  Now I had only 90 more steps to go.   Step, step, exhale, step, step, inhale, step, step exhale.  84 left. 

With the last step onto Columbia Crest, the skinniest, most pale, perhaps weakest kid in my junior high and high school physical education classes had just climbed Mount Rainier.  In fact, I had now climbed them all solo; Mount Adams, Mount Hood, Glacier Peak, Mount Baker, Mount St. Helens, and, Mount Rainier.  Surely I had proven the doctors wrong, who had once recommended that I prepare myself for life in a wheelchair. 

No matter what the past or future held, I could safely say the score was now Mount Rainier 3, Glenn 1.

I was exceptionally clear-headed while kneeling on the snows of Columbia Crest.  As I clicked off a few exposures of film, two climbers came up from a different route, tied together with a rope I now envied.  One of them handed me a fine Nikon.  After taking a picture of them with the East Crater in the background, I handed him back his camera along with my own El Cheap'o.  He snapped a picture with the top of Liberty Cap to my right, handed back my camera and down over the edge they went.  No words were exchanged among us, and none were needed.  Turning fully around I paused to take one more look at Washington State and much of Oregon spread out below, as sun rays shone softly through a thin layer of clouds off to the southwest.  One more deep breath of Rainier's purified, rarefied air, and it was time to head for home. 

It was snowing by the time I left the East Crater Rim that morning.  While retracing the route over crevasses below the crater, I was fully aware that inclement weather was closing in on the mountain again.  I had to boogie. 

Standing back at a 4 foot wide crevasse I had jumped across on the ascent, light streamed into this fathomless hole as a trickle of water ran down and off the end of an icicle hanging within arm's reach to my right.  Every part of my being told me not to cross that crevasse, and yet there was very little choice in the matter, since home lay on the other side.   I made the jump, vowing to never do that kind of thing again.  Golf.  Tennis.  Fishing.  Sailing.  Yes, I had long meant to learn how to sail a boat. 

After a terrifying descent of Disappointment Cleaver and the jumping of a couple more moderate sized crevasses, I arrived back at my bivouac site.  I was numb.  I removed my crampons one at a time as if on automatic, and then crawled in with my boots and clothes on and all.  With one more look back up at the King of the Cascades, I had a good cry, and soon fell fast asleep.

A deep chill had set in by the time I awoke as it was now late afternoon.  I was all wrung out.  In the interim of only a few hours the sun had pulled a disappearing act behind a bank of clouds.  The temperature had plummeted as a result.  Looking out the hatch of my sack, shivering all over again, rubbing my eyes in the stark glare, at first I wasn't even sure where the hell I was.  Clouds and fog and glacier tend to be indistinguishable from one another on the major volcanoes of the Pacific Northwest.

A while later this old man packed up and prepared for a slow descent to Paradise.  This time it would really be like “Paradise,” rather than another one of Mount Rainier's cruel jokes. When I was just opposite a place called "Moon Rocks" the clouds began to part around me.  Moon rocks are uncomfortable, as a few of us old Astronauts know.  I made myself comfortable on one and watched as 'The Mountain' came out of the clouds and towered gloriously overhead.  Then it all closed back in again. 

That single moment made it all worthwhile, suspended in time . . . as I looked upon the face of something more spiritual than physical, more eternal than temporal - more than merely a mountain.

Copyright @2000 Glenn Williams