Afternoon Alpine Ski - Maiden

Morning Run - BAE ❤️ NW Lancaster River Trail ❄️

Lunch Run

Afternoon Run - CAGB

What an epic, hard climb for #25. Half way done! At around 5:30pm, we got a route briefing from Tim the Climbing Ranger. After the briefing he told me he used to work for RMI and had lost count, but he thought he had climbed Rainier nearly 100x. I listened attentively to his advice. 

From talking with Tim and the other climbers that were heading down as we came up to camp, we gathered that several climbers took the wrong route where a ladder fell into a crevasse overnight at around 13k, causing them to get cliffed out and forcing them to turn around, ruining some of their summit attempts. 

The mountain was not getting below freezing at night so everything was shifting and moving almost by the hour in the heat of the day. 

We started around midnight on about 40 minutes of crappy sleep at Camp Muir. Roped up, we headed off into the night, following the headlamps of several large guided RMI groups. 

Our plan was to take the DC Route (Disappointment Cleaver) up - starting at Muir, across the Cowlitz Glacier, up through Cathedral Gap, onto the Ingraham Glacier, across several snow bridges and a ladder to Disappointment Cleaver. Then from there the route changed dramatically (even from days before) as we got onto the Emmons Glacier for what seemed like forever. Another series of snow bridges and ladder crossings and some steep switchbacked climbs in the dark until we reached the crater rim. Then we dumped our packs and unclipped from the rope and hiked across the crater to Columbia Crest (the summit).  

We had this special place all to ourselves, as the guide services had just descended. We were absolutely smoked and then we had to downclimb that 5,000’ back to Camp Muir, try to eat and break camp and lug all our gear back down another 4,500’ to Paradise.  We had a total uptime of about 16 hours from camp to summit, then back down to camp and on through more snowfields to the car. Everything hurts, but it was worth it! 😜

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Wild Weasel

#25 - Washington - Mount Rainier - 14,411'

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Afternoon Alpine Ski - Maiden

Morning Run - BAE ❤️ NW Lancaster River Trail ❄️

Lunch Run

Afternoon Run - CAGB

Afternoon Run - CAGB

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