Mount Rainier climbing preparation

Mt Rainier from the Wonderland trail

RAMROD

For the past three years I have been drawn to Mount Rainier.  Two years ago by bike in the RAMROD event; ride around Mt Rainier in one day.  Last year I circumnavigated Rainier on the Wonderland trail.  This year it will be an attempt to summit Mount Rainier.  Summiting Rainier was not something on my bucket list, not something I was drawn to or even thinking about. When my good friend called me and mentioned she was climbing with a teacher friend of hers and two other women and would I be interested in joining them I instantly knew that this was something I wanted to do.  Our guide would be the amazing Lisa Rust a teacher in HR that has extensive guiding experience.  Lisa has guided over 50 summit climbs up Mt Rainier, many expeditions at McKinley and climbed Everest.  If I was going to do this, she would be the one to go with.  I am honored to be asked to go with this strong group of women. 

There was not a lot of training time from the time I was asked, four weeks.  Mt Rainier is known to be the a climb of endurance.  The mountain is 14, 411 feet.  Time to get serious.

Proposed route:
The route to the summit of Rainier traverses across the Cowlitz Glacier, which is in great shape with few crevasses to navigate around. Ascend Catherdral Gap to the back side of Cathedral Ridge to Ingraham Flats. The traverse to Disappointment Cleaver remains straightforward and is followed up by the climb up the 'shoulder' of the Cleaver, switchbacking up the flanks of the ridge until 12,300'. From here the route takes a new turn and climbs terrain seldom seen, heading south towards Camp Comfort near the top of Gibraltar Rock. This entails a traverse that brings us to a ramp that takes us to terrain just above Camp Comfort at 12,800'. From here there are switchback up moderately angled slopes which encounters few of the steep areas our normal route offers. We then meet up with our old route at about 13,900' for the last 300' to the crater rim.

practicing self arrest at Timberline

The climbing plan is to go to Muir camp from Paradise, spend the night. Day two from Muir camp to the summit (if all goes well) back to Muir to pick up our stuff and back to Paradise.  With limited time to train and a full time job I loaded my pack up with 30 pounds and hiked up Dog Mountain; 8 miles and 2,800 feet elevation gain and loss. Beautiful way to spend the morning - but I literally put 30 lbs weight in my bag and with out the weight distribution it was quite uncomfortable.  

My second training preparation was to climb Mt Adams and practice some rope work on the way up.  Early Friday morning we packed our bags and headed up Adams.  On the way up we practice rope work, learned that the rope is what you use to communicate with, practiced right amount of slack, keeping the rope on the down hill side and how to turn; drop rope step over, turn, switch ice axe hand and move the rope behind you up hill out of the way of the person behind you and to do all this while still moving.   We had a successful summit of Adams with a peak at the base of Mt Rainier, the top was in the clouds.  The Mt Adams summit was confidence building for the up coming Mt Rainier adventure.  

I am feeling respectfully excited and nervous about the upcoming summit attempt, hope the good weather holds.

View of Mt Rainier from summit of Mt Adams

More Information:
Mount Rainier Climbing - blog
Climbing Mt Rainier - Backpacking magazine
Yes you can climb Mt Rainier - Outside Magazine