Okay, so I know you're all itching to hear the story behind my climb. Sorry it took so long :)Let me start by saying what I've said to some of you already - this was by far the hardest thing I have ever done, both physically and psychologically. Now, originally when I would tell people that I was going to climb, the response that I overwhelming received was: "Yeah, my sister did that." or "My church group did that a couple of years ago." Every time I wanted to say, "Really? I highly doubt it," but I didn't want to sound like a jerk. I mean, it is likely these people went to Raininer, and even hiked around the park, or maybe hiked up toward the high camp. Maybe even made it over the snowfield to the high camp, which is totally do-able for the majority of reasonably-fit people. But what I think nobody realizes is that Rainier is not just some old mountain that you can day-hike up. I don't know if the pictures will do it justice, but hopefully you'll be able to get a sense of what it was like.
I arrived on the Thursday in Seattle. Sue arrived shortly after me, and we met two other people who were going to share a car with us, Nancy, a grad student from Conn., and Alex, who had just come off a 70-day NOLS course in the Yukon, and you could totally smell it!
We drove to the bunkhouse and checked in ate dinner and tried to get some sleep. The next day we had climbing school. We hiked about an hour into a small snowfield. It was cloudy and chilly. We spent the day learning basic mountaineering skills like how to walk in crampons, roped up to one another, and how to self-arrest and team-arrest if one of us were to fall. That was the most fun part, at least in the safe confines of a cravasse-less snowfield. We'd go barrelling down the hill on our stomachs, or on our backs and then hav
e to throw our ice axes into the snow and swing our bodies around and kick our crampons into the hill to stop the fall. By the end of the day I was getting really excited to get out there and climb. Most of us went and had dinner together at this little restaurant down the street, and then I spent some time in the outdoor hot tub. I was the only one there, it was pretty chilly outside, and the stars were amazing. Exactly how I want to retire, that's for sure.On Saturday, we packed up and headed out, getting to the t
railhead at about 10 a.m. The first part of the trail is suited for day-hiking, with some of it even asphalt - about four miles worth of steps. Then we arrived at the snowfield, which leads up to Camp Muir at 10,000, where we'd be staying for the evening. Even though we were on snow, it was quite warm and nice. We made it up to Camp Muir at about 3:30 in the afternoon. There we were told to repack everything in our packs so that when it was time to get up and go, we'd be ready to head out quickly. Then we ate and drank lots of water and they put us "to bed" around 6:15. Obviously I couldn't sleep a wink. I just lay there th
inking about how hard this was going to be, and tried to rest. At about midnight, one of the girls in our group got up and was violently vomitting outside. At first we all thought it was altitude sickness and that she'd have to be rushed down right away, but it turned out to be food poisoning, and so she was left there in the hut while the rest of us left for the summit. Kind of awful, I know, but I guess that's really how things go in the mountaineering world. We started out for
the summit at about 1:30 am. The moon was out, and it reflected beautifully off the glacier. We were roped up three to a guide, Sue and Nancy and I were together, which was great. We traversed over the mostly level Cowlitz glacier, then climbed the scree (loose rock) in the Cathedral gap, which is difficult in crampons. Then, because of the lateness of the season and the lack of snow, we did not climb the difficult and scary "Dissapointment Cleaver" but instead lost about 400 feet in elevation going around it and 
then reclimbing back up the Emmons glacier. We stopped every hour or so for a break and the first thing we did was slap on our parkas. The wind was awful, and besides the crazy angle of the incline (you can see how steep it is from this picture taken on the descent). I kept getting blown over into the side of the mountain. It was terribly hard on the legs, but they teach you techniques like pressure breathing (to help in the thin air) and rest-stepping, where you
lock your supporting leg before taking your next step to give your resting leg a split-second of complete rest before placing weight on it. It doesn't seem like much, but over thousands of steps it really helps. We climbed what the guides were calling the "Hillary Step" named after this very difficult vertical section right at the end of the summiting of Everest. Ours was much shorter and more manageable. (See photo on right.) We saw the lights of Yakima and Seattle, and saw the sun rise through these clouds which was really eerie. We reached the summit about 8 a.m., making good time. The summit was really windy and cold, and kind of anti-climactic because it's not really a summit at all, 
but a giant crater - 3 miles square. We spent about an hour up there and then started down. I was terribly tired because I wasn't drinking enough water (I was too cold to drink more cold water) and my food was pretty
frozen. We started down on shaky legs, but it warmed up quickly and the wind died down, and so we were stripping layers in no time. It was a whole different world on the descent. Going up was very zen-like, as all you could really see was the spot made by your headlamp in front of you, and so it was easy to just focus on that and keep going. But on the way down it was very clear how close we were at all times to death. One slip on an icy patch of snow or a wrong step into a crevasse and you were done for. We also had to be much more careful on the way down, concentrating on not tripping over ourselves on account of our fatigue. We made it back down to Camp Muir at about 1 p.m., and then boot-skiied down the snowfield. We finally made it off the mountain at about 4:30 p.m. I was so tired and my feet and knees were killing me because of all the steps down. I thought I'd lost toenails, but luckily I didn't.
My boots were great, and I only had one blister! At that time, though, I thought I'd never do anything like it again, but when I woke up the next morning still being able to walk, I realized I really liked it. So I'm hoping to go back this next spring for a mountaineering skills course and another attempt at the summit. I met a bunch of great people who hopefully I will be able to see again and climb with. Nancy invited Sue and me out to do a winter attempt on Mt. Washington, which I'm really excited about. Plus, there were 18 people who all raised $3500 apiece for this great charity, and that was just on one climb! I'm happy to have been able to be part of something so great and for such a great cause.
