Mt. Rainier: Day 1

By 8 a.m., I was finally organized and ready to meet the team for Day 1 of mountaineering school. There was so much energy and enthusiasm in the team of eight clients and four guides. If there is anyway to describe RMI Guides, it would be amazing. My guides, Shaun Sears, Eric Frank, Jake Beren, and John Colver, were exceptional and I would be delighted if ever given the opportunity to climb with them again.

After a quick gear check and itinerary rundown, the team headed over to Paradise at Mt. Rainier National Park for a training day on the slopes. Day 1 was dedicated to introducing us to basic techniques like rest-stepping and pressure breathing; proper use of helmets, harnesses, and ice axes; cramponing; roped travel; ice axe arrest practice; placing anchors and running belays; fixed line travel; and the basics of crevasse rescue.

The trek into our practice spot was only about 45 minutes in 15 feet of snow cover, but it was enough of a trek for the guides to begin assessing our physical condition. The day’s highlight was sliding down a mild slope and putting our ice axe arrest skills to the test. Some of the team members really got into this exercise and would get a running start to speed down the slope. Heavy emphasis was placed on rest-stepping and pressure breathing, which I would soon find out, is truly the key to endurance and success in mountaineering.

We ended our training day at Paradise by about 3:30 in the afternoon and headed back to RMI for a quick pow-wow, lessons learned, and update for the following day. Dinner that night was at Copper Creek Inn, famous for their blackberry pie. If you ever go, you can’t pass it up, and I would suggest a la mode.

Day 2

Up early again for our 8:15 a.m. start of Day 2. We stayed at RMI all day to review our proposed route to the summit, go over ‘Leave No Trace’ practices, rehearse knot-tying techniques and crevasse rescue, and perform thorough gear and clothing checks. We also divided up who would carry what up. With little food, water, and group gear my backpack was at 46 lbs, but once it was fully loaded, it weighed about 55 pounds. I was all for bringing the bare minimum, the less weight the better. I decided to name my backpack “My Little Monster” – a highly appropriate title for what was going to be my greatest challenge on the climb.

Although I had trained with my pack the week before at San Jacinto and Mt. Baldy in California, it just felt different on Mt. Rainier and it took me a couple of days to get it ideally adjusted. After our weigh in, all I could think was, “I better make it up there with this thing!”

We ended the day with a team dinner at Whittaker Mountaineering’s outdoor café and then headed over for an encore round of Copper Creek blackberry pie. That night it was a final catch-up on e-mails and pending action items for Climb Take Action, a good night sleep was in order for our adventure to come.