The title just rolls right off the tongue, doesn’t it? The summit attempt of Mt. Rainier had been on the calendar since we (really just Adam) had applied for our group’s permit in March. Dan and Josh were flying in from outta state. Tom and Eric were going to try and pick up permits the day of. It was going to be Sarah’s b-day and the weather was going to be perfect for the weekend.
It was going to be great… until we got there and found out through some miscommunication, the park had cancelled our permits. Through the course of the next hour and some smooth talking from Adam, we were able to get half of our group to the campsite we had originally planned, but the other half would have to basically attempt to climb Mt. Rainier in a day. Gross. Ashley, Daniel, Grant, Sarah and Joey took one for the team and volunteered to do the one day summit attempt (thanks guys!).
Bummed we would have to split up the group, but very conscious we had already eaten up some valuable time figuring out the permit situation, we made quick work of making sure each group had the proper group gear and started heading to the high camp (Emmons Flats). Sidenote: somehow there’s a toilet up there, what a luxury! While we were setting up camp and getting ready to head to bed, the low camp group started hiking before the sunset.
As we were waking up and getting ready in the morning (2:00 am ish), Adam thought he recognized the backpack of one of the groups passing through. It just so happened Joey, Grant and Sarah were pushing through our camp, just as we were getting ready to leave. (Ashley and Daniel had to turn back due to some injuries, and come on, they were trying to climb Rainier in a day for goodness sake!) From there each rope team took turns leading and taking breaks. Every time we past the low camp group, I couldn’t believe they were still moving.
Around 9 am the high camp group finally made it to the top. Very shortly after, we turn around to see the “little engine that could”, forcefully taking the last few steps to the summit. I turned to Adam and said, “I have never seen Grant look that beat.” Grant is a machine, he goes from working night shifts to doing multi-day technical climbs with a mere few hours of sleep. It was a paradigm shift to see him at anything other than highly functional.
The before (at base camp) and after (at the summit) photos of Sarah celebrating her b-day. That girl can party!
Remember in Bambi when Thumper says, “if you can’t say anything nice, don’t say anything at all”? I’m going to stick to that motto on the story of our descent. I mean, how would you feel standing on top of the world, only wanting a beer and sleep, knowing that you had 10,000 vertical feet and plenty of crevasses until you could get them?
Or you could bring a beer, I suppose.
At the end of the day, we were sitting around at Grant and Adam’s place drinking some well deserved beers and eating pizza, talking about how we were never going to do anything like that ever again. I turned to Sarah and said, “remember that one time you started hiking on your birthday and didn’t stop until the next day?” We all smiled, and probably started to change our minds about never being able to say that about something like that ever again.
for my friends who are moms 