Mt Rainier from the Wonderland trail |
RAMROD |
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:
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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 |
Mount Rainier Climbing - blog
Climbing Mt Rainier - Backpacking magazine
Yes you can climb Mt Rainier - Outside Magazine