Archive for the ‘Climbing’ Category

Trip Report: Climbing Mt Rainier via the Emmons Glacier Route

August 1, 2008

On the weekend of July 26, 2008, I climbed Mt Rainier via the Emmons Glacier Route with Tom Romary, Dan Pingree, Joe Heitzberg, and Mark Maunder. Tom was our fearless leader.

 

We met at the White River campground on Thursday night. Oddly, there were almost no mosquitoes. The weather was clear and warm, though there was a storm in the forecast. Fortunately, it was expected to hit Saturday night–we planned to summit on Friday night. Nonetheless, we were crossing our fingers.

 

We drank a few beers, reviewed crevasse rescue in Freedom of the Hills(best mountaineering instruction book available), and then went to bed, sleeping under the stars. We saw numerous satellites and a couple shooting stars–a great show. We awoke at 6am and were on the trail by 9am.

 

The trail between the White River Campground and Glacier Basin was totally wiped out a couple years ago b/c of major winter storms. The Park service has done a good job of constructing a makeshift trail, but this definitely slowed us down a bit.

 

The mosquitoes at Glacier Basin were horrendous. This was true also when I camped here in 2002 on our descent from the peak. We pulled out some pure Deet to ward them off. We had a quick snack here. Birds are aggressive here and we almost lost a bag of food.

 


Just before we reached the bottom of the Inter Glacier, Mark announced that he was having real trouble with his heels–major blisters. He actually had decided to turn back. Tom and I did our best to convince him to keep moving. Even if he only made it to Camp Schurman, that would be worth a little pain. He decided to keep going, which ended up being a great decision.  

 

We made it to Camp Schurman at about 4pm (7 hours hiking). The space was very tight as there was a lot of snow–many of the typical sites were still buried under snow. Since we were one of the later parties to arrive, we had to make do and squeezed Tom’s expedition North Face tent between some friendly neighbors. We made a yummy dinner of pasta and canned chicken, packed our bags for the morning and went to bed at 8:30.



We awoke at 11:45 (I didn’t really sleep a wink) to clear skies. The sky was full of stars and we watched the orange half moon rise as we prepped for the climb. More shooting stars, more satellites… I must say the night sky is one of my favorite aspects of climbing Rainier. There are few times in my life that I feel the vastness of the universe–the Rainier night sky has this impact.

 

We gulped down some coffee and oatmeal to fuel up for the long day ahead. We left Camp Schurmann at 1am.

 

The first hour we kept a pretty good pace. The route was in great shape because of the big winter snowpack of 2008. Our pace was pretty slow as we had many stops for water, snacks and equipment issues.

 

I hiked with my headlamp turned off for most of the way as there was ample light reflecting off the snow from the half moon and stars. Most people did use their headlamps.

Mark had some problems on the climb with his stomach and generally feeling crappy. At one point he puked and kept on hiking. He definitely wins the award for most tenacity. Tom did a great job as trip leader keeping Mark going when the going got tough.

 

We ascended the Corridor and then the route veered right and climbed the headwall, where the route gets a bit steeper. The route then went further right traversing past the bergschrund. The crevasses and ice formations were very cool here.

We got to the summit mound where we took off our crampons to climb the remaining 200 feet or so on the dirt, dust and lava rock. Tom stopped here with Mark and Joe to make some soup to aid Mark’s condition. Dan and I climbed to the peak. We summitted at about 9:30AM (8 1/2 hours of climbing). Great views and a great feeling of satisfaction.

We started descending at about 10:30. The first hour tested the group’s patience as we had just a few too many stops and delays. We finally got moving after Tom got ornery. From then on, we made great time and whizzing down the mountain.

 

We arrived at Camp Schurman at 2:30 (4 hr descent) exhausted.

 

We debated for a long time what to do next. Tom really wanted to get home that night. I was more ambivalent. Others were the same. We lazed around, cooked some food, took naps, and finally decided to descend. We didnt leave Schurman until 5:30 and knew that we’d be racing the darkness.

 

We raced down the hill, glissading most of the Inter Glacier and got lost at the bottom of the Inter Glacier. I have no idea how this happened. It was probably my fault as I was in the lead trying to keep the pace fast. I think we went left too early off the snowfield at the bottom of the glacier. We crossed a band of dirt and rock and hit another snowfield. We decided to keep moving down the snowfield we were on, knowing that it all funnelled down to the same spot. It did. We hit the trail and kept going.

 

We arrived at the cars at 9pm (3 1/2 hours from Schurman), just after darkness. A very long day indeed… Aside from our 3 hour break at Schurman we had been moving since 1AM, 20 hours straight.

 

The drive home was brutal. Tom, Dan and I stopped in Enumclaw for dinner at a Mexican place. I almost fell asleep at dinner. Tom took the wheel, because I was toast. I finally got home at around 1:30, 26 hours after waking up to start our climb. Next time, I’ll camp.

 

Summit day I wore the right amount of clothing. What I wore:

gore tex bib pants & jacket

  • fleece jacket
  • long underwear top & bottom
  • Scarpa Charmoz GTX boots–these were fantastic
  • sock liners & wool socks
  • some crummy ski gloves (lightweight mountaineering gloves would be better)
  • balaclava & helmet
  • Black Diamond Alpine Bod harness (I bought it for this trip to replace my 15 year old rock climbing harness. Perfect for this trip as its light and also inexpensive.)
  • and of course crampons

John Cook wrote a story about this. Check it out here: http://blog.seattlepi.nwsource.com/venture/archives/145382.asp

Here is a link to Mark’s account:

Here are some pictures from Joe:

Here are some pictures from Dan:

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Trip Report: Climbing Mount Olympus via the Blue Glacier

July 18, 2007



On July 14, 2007, Tom Romary and I climbed Mount Olympus via the Blue Glacier.

We got a really late start out of Seattle on Thursday night (10pm) and drove to the Hoh Rainforest visitor center at 3am. Whizzing through the little town of Forks on the Olympic Peninsula at 2am, we got a speeding ticket–ughhh!
We car camped at the Hoh visitor center and awoke Friday morning to a wet tent–it had rained… not exactly what you hope for on the start of a climbing trip. After a leisurely morning, we hit the trailhead at 11:30 and started our 18 mile trek up the Hoh river valley to basecamp.
Tom had forgotten his bowl, cup, spoon and fork. I had an extra bowl and cup, but we were facing 2 days of either sharing our utensils or Tom eating with his hands (I wasn’t sure which yet.) Incredibly as we hiked along the Hoh river, Tom found a set of plastic utensils on the ground. I was relieved.
The first 13-14 miles of the approach went pretty quickly–easy, flat hiking. Its a beautiful hike and would be a perfect trail to backpack with kids. Along the way we saw tons of huge sitka spruce and cedar trees.
At about 4pm the trail started to climb. We crossed an amazing footbridge over a rushing tributary to the Hoh River. The river was in a super narrow canyon and about 100 feet deep.
The last 4 miles was absolutely brutal. After hiking 14 flat miles we climbed 4000 feet in the last 4 miles. We arrived at basecamp at Glacier Meadows at 8pm–8 1/2 hours of hiking–completely spent.
We woke on Saturday morning at 5AM to clear skies. On the trail by 6:30, we followed the signs to the Terminal Moraine. Wrong! The Lateral Moraine is the way to go… Anyhow, we tried finding the glacier and ended up at a dead end cliff. We backtracked and finally found the Lateral Moraine trail. Just before arriving at the Blue Glacier, the trail follows a steep knife edge ridge and finally down a scree field to the glacier. We crossed the Blue Glacier and went up a snow chute which is clearly not passable later in the summer with less snow. I think this chute saved us a lot of time, so I’d recommend climbing this route early while snow covered.
Up the chute, through some rock bands and reached the final stretch before the snow dome. WE caught up with 2 other groups at the snow dome and passed them at the bergschrund where we forged a path over a huge snow bridge.
We hiked around the corner onto a south facing slope and climbed the backside of the “5 fingers”. Here we reached a cliff, where we got a great view of the summit. We backtracked a bit and went up and over the 5 fingers through a chute and downclimbed to get to the saddle in front of the summit. We climbed a short steep snowfield and arrived at the summit block at 10:30 (a 4 hour climb).
There are a couple options to climb the summit block. First was to climb a 40 foot 5.6 to 5.7 on good solid rock. The second option was to climb around the back of the block on a 4th class scramble, but with huge exposure (1000-2000 feet?). We basically wimped out. A team that arrived behind us climbed the block via the scramble.
From the peak, the views to the east were amazing. Baker, Rainier, Adams, and St Helens were all in sight along with innumerable jagged Olympic range peaks.
Fun boot glissading on the descent. Tom poked through on the snow chute a couple times so that we could see we were essentially on a flake of snow above the a cliff.
We had a great dinner that night at Glacier Meadows and left the next morning at 8am for the car. The flat section was brutal. Both of us in immense foot pain, we hobbled our way to the car. We arrived at 3 pm after 7 hours of hiking.
Some tips on climbing Mount Olympus:
  1. Be prepared for the summit block if you want to get to the true peak. We had the rope and protection, but our skills were quite rusty and as young dads, our risk tolerance low. :-)
  2. Mosquitoes–there are tons of them. Bring lots of deet and slather it on.
  3. The approach–we were kind of attracted to the physical challenge of doing the approach in one day. We both felt great about pulling this off, but next time I think I’d save the pain and break it up a bit. Certainly, we could have descended the first 4 miles on Saturday (summit day)
  4. Footwear: We debated this. Tom said that next time, he’d wear a pair of light hiking boots for the approach. I’m somehow totally against carrying mountaineering boots in my backpack, and my foot pain wasnt a result of bad boots, so I’d wear my Scarpa Charmoz GTX boots again. I might consider buying a nicer footsole.
  5. Bring crocs for camp–your feet will love them.
  6. Pack light. Its a long way in.

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Trip Report: Climbing Mt Baker via the Coleman/Deming route

August 11, 2005

Tom Romary, Jon Faller and I climbed Mt Baker via the Coleman/Deming route in August 2005.

We drove from Seattle on Friday night and camped at the very end of road 39 (just past the Heliotrope Ridge trailhead), which was an awesome place to car camp. It put us very close to the start of the climb and we woke up to stunning views of the mountain and great views of a deep wooded glacial valley. I’m actually not sure this is a legal place to camp, so don’t do it with your boy scout group.

We awoke to perfect weather—blue skies and not a cloud.

I had pneumonia.

I had coughed all night and didn’t sleep much as a result. As we had breakfast and packed our packs, I was totally undecided if I was going to drop Tom and Jon off and hang out in our illegal campsite for 2 days while they climbed or brave it. I had checked with the doctor who said that it really wouldn’t hurt me to climb. I never really decided to climb, but just got caught up in the packing & preparation and found myself at the trailhead and figured I’d see how far I could get.


We climbed the Heliotrope Ridge trail (also called the Mt Baker trail), which is gorgeous, water flowing everywhere, wildflowers abounding. The trail switchbacks up a very steep part of the mountain, and at times feels like it climbs straight up. My lungs were holding out, despite some hacking here and there. Tom and Jon didn’t seem to mind, so I kept going. We reached the glacier at 6000 feet. The lower glacier is heavily crevassed so we roped up and put crampons on. We arrived at our basecamp below the Black Buttes at 7000 feet at 3:30, just over 4 hours of hiking. I’d recommend this as basecamp as it broke up the hike well.

With the time we had, we tried out our crevasse rescue skills and watched Tom attempt to impress us with his ice climbing skills (which really just got him all wet.) It was very cool (literally) to climb down into this crevasse, something every mountaineer should experience.

Dinner sucked.

Someone had the great idea to mix everything into one bowl, soup, pasta, etc. Somehow it all turned into glue. We choked it down.


A million stars were out at night, with no moon, and shooting stars abundant. Any fears we had of the next day’s climb were stoked as we listened to the thundering icefall at night. My hacking cough surely guaranteed a good night’s sleep for Tom & Jon.

We awoke at 2:30AM and started hiking by 3:05.

Ascending from 7000 feet to 9000 feet we encountered many large crevasses and icefall. We crossed 2 snowbridges across 2 giant crevasses. I was leading and set some running pro because the bridges caused us to zigzag and would have left us unprotected. We climbed a steep face to a pumice ridge. We ascended this ridge to the “Roman Wall” which is about 800 feet high and fairly steep.

The conditions on the Roman Wall (and the rest of the climb for that matter) were excellent: cold firm snow.
This is where my pneumonia awoke. I suddenly noticed that I was heaving like a horse after the Kentucky Derby and looked down at Tom and Jon who were practically falling asleep because of our glacial pace. I felt bad and apologized. Using proper “rest step” technique, I kept moving.

We finally reached the summit at 7:15AM after 4 hours and 15 minutes of climbing. The weather was clear and windy at the top. We witnessed amazing views in every direction, including Mt Shuksan.

We descended to base camp and then the car. We made a bad decision to take our crampons off for the lower glacier and ran into a lot of blue ice which made for a very slippery go. We reached the car 11 hours after setting out that morning.

Tips for next time:

  • Bring a camera even if there are 2—both of the other cameras failed.
  • Make simple meals
  • Watch for crows! The crows at the car camping site were aggressive.
  • Eat more than you think you need while hiking
  • Keep crampons on until the end of the glacier

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Trip Report: Climbing Mt Hood (Cooper Spur) & Mt Adams (Crescent Glacier Route)

August 30, 2004


Over a long weekend, August 30 2004, Alex Frankel and I attempted to climb Mt. Hood and Mt Adams.

The Hood climb was a bust. 

We had planned to climb the most popular “South Side Route“. We did some basic route planning such as consulting a few websites and reviewing the guidebook “Climbing the Cascade Volcanoes” by Jeff Smoot but this wasn’t enough. We arrived in the evening at the Timberline lodge and went to the climbers information center where we found only cobwebs. There was a sign that looked like it had come through an 80’s Xerox machine that was dated mid-July (we were there late August) which said that climbing was closed for the season due to high rock fall danger. A bit crestfallen, we searched for anyone that might have information on the climbing to see if we could learn more about the dangers on the main South Side route. There wasn’t a single climber to be found. We even went so far as asking some of the wait staff at the bar in the Timberline—nobody knew anything. Where were all the climbers?!

Being the conservative climbers that we are, Alex and I discussed finding a different route. We picked the “Cooper Spur” route and thus decided to travel to the east side of the mountain and camp at the “Cloud Cap” Campground. We pulled into Cloud Cap very late and hit the sack. 

We woke early (5am or so) and got on the trail to Cooper Spur. The weather was clear and warm. After hiking above the treeline, we quickly realized that the Cooper Spur was not climbable. The upper snow slopes had completely melted out leaving only steep, bare rock… not what we planned.


We decided to follow our backup plan which was to drop from the Cooper Spur ridge to the Eliot Glacier, cross the lower glacier and follow the Eliot Glacier/Sunshine route. Dropping off the ridge was sketchy as it was a long, loose, steep scree field, though we made it without problem. Once on the glacier, the mountain started coming alive. Rockfall, icefall and other thundering sounds began to echo through the valley. We took a break to examine the line we would follow. The route wasn’t totally clear and the only way we saw took us under what looked like a lot of rockfall. After a bit of debate we decided we weren’t comfortable with the conditions and to abandon the climb.

In hindsight, had we called the local Ranger station, we might have learned that the South Side route was hazardous because of rockfall and decided to either pick something else or return to Hood another year, earlier in the season.  

We descended and drove to Mt Adams.

We camped at the Cold Springs campground where we learned too late that there was no water. (Actually, I think we knew this but screwed up and forgot to refill.) Anyhow, low on water, we did our best to conserve.

We left the Cold Springs Campground at 6AM and ascended Mt Adams via the “South Spur Route” on the south side of the mountain. The weather was perfect, clear and sunny. We didn’t bring a rope, and never even needed to pull our crampons out of our packs. The sun had warmed up the snowfield just enough to kick our toes in to get purchase on the snow. The climb took 4.5 hours from the campground to the top. Pretty uneventful climb, but very worth it—great views.

Here are some personal notes for future trips:

  • Bring a camelback
  • Pop an advil on the top of the summit to avoid the inevitable headache upon descent
  • Would be great to have some mini-crampons to fit on leather hiking boots (rather than heavy mountaineering boots)
  • A new lightweight 9mm rope would be great
  • Next time call the ranger station to get up to date info
  • GPS & altimeter would be great for navigation. 

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Trip Report: Climbing Mt Rainier – Emmons Glacier Route, July 2002

July 30, 2002

In July of 2002 I climbed Mt Rainier for the second time with a great team which included: Tom Romary, Bill Romary, Jon Faller, Tim Krozek, and Erik Duisenberg. This was my first trip up the Emmons Glacier route and loved it. The Emmons is a bit less technical than the more popular Disappointment Cleaver route, a lot less crowded, but more beautiful in my opinion. Climbing the Emmons takes you through 5000 feet of raw glacier where you witness amazing features.

We had a great climb in great weather. The route was in good shape. We ascended to Camp Schurman on Friday, took a short nap Friday night, awaking at midnight . We started hiking around 1am and reached the summit at 9am or so. The route took us to the left at around 11,500 feet wrapping around the mountain to connect to the top of the Disappointment Cleaver route. I guess this is not typical, but we were just following the boot track that earlier climbers had established.

We descended to Camp Schurman and then down to the Glacier Basin campground where we spent Saturday night. Many mosquitoes! Saturday night it rained on us quite a bit—we were fortunate that we summitted the day before.

Here are a few pictures from the trip.

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