The idea to climb Mount Rainier took hold of me in the depths of winter. Poring over maps on a stormy day in late February, the idea took root and wouldn’t let go. The 3D rendering of that magnificent giant of a mountain on Google Earth magnetized me. I had to see for myself what Mount Rainier was all about.
A week later, the dates were set — June 7-8. My partner would already be making a trip to Eugene, OR for a work training that week, and so the mountain would be along the route driving home – practically begging to be climbed. From my research, I learned that Rainier in early June came with its own variety of perks and downsides. For one, the glaciers would be safer in early June due to deeper snowpack and thus there would be less of the dangers posed by warming and snowmelt in a crevasse-heavy environment.
However, early June also meant an increased chance of weather hazards like high winds, extreme cold, storms and avalanche danger. Half of this meant crossing my fingers for a good weather window for the climb. To mitigate avalanche danger, we would carry our avalanche gear – beacon, probe, and shovel – in case of a slide.
Over the next few months, I focused my energy on preparing for the objective with many, many trail runs on local trails followed by strength workouts to train for the physical demands of this mountain as well as objectives later in the summer. The challenge I was most focused on in my training period was carrying the weight of a pack with overnight gear, climbing gear, avalanche gear, and cold weather gear – which came out to be between 45-50lbs – up and down the 9,000ft of Mount Rainier without injury and with keeping enough reserves for the other climbing objectives (Mount Adams, primarily) I wanted to accomplish that week while in the area.
Finally, the day came.
The NOAA forecast for the two days of our climb was bluebird and warm. We felt like we won the lottery considering that the two weeks prior the mountain had been getting hit with storm after storm.
After spending a night in the back of the truck on forest service lands outside the national park boundary, we arrived at the Paradise Wilderness Information at 7am to pick up our permit right when the center opened and left the parking lot around 8am. The snow was soft already from the sunshine and we felt glad to have our skis with us for floatation.
We arrived at Muir Camp, the high camp where we would spend the night before the summit push, at about 1:30pm and spent most of the afternoon boiling water from snow to drink that evening and the next day. Crazy how long that shit takes. More folks arrived throughout the day, including a huge guided group of 15-20 people.
We lay down for sleep at 6pm (or mountaineer midnight). Due to the high temps, we wanted to be back to the high camp from our summit push day by noon the next day to minimize the dangers from warming on the upper mountain, including icefall in the notorious Bowling Alley and weak snowbridges over crevasses.
We roped up at 11:30pm to start the climb up this beautiful beast of a mountain from the high camp, all nerves and jitter. The quiet of the night was palpable under a sky filled to its brim with stars. The far off beams of headlamps and the gentle tinkling of carabiners the only evidence that we weren’t the sole humans to exist. Those distant climbing parties were going to the same place as us – the only place an (in)sane human would go in the middle of the night here – to the top of the volcano of course. It was a solace to share the mountain with these humans, all of us off our rockers enough to think that climbing 9,000 vertical feet and traversing miles upon miles of crevasses and seracs with our fragile human bodies was a good and fun way to spend a weekend.
We reached the crater rim at 5:30am, the entire sky blanketed in soft pink. Being witness to that sunrise on the summit of Mount Rainier was a truly spiritual experience.
I would have loved to stay longer but after about 30 minutes Luke and I were both too cold to manage any longer even in our huge puffy coats.
We started the descent. The crux of the descent was a large bergshund at around 13,200 ft where you cross via a steep snowbridge that is quite exposed. The snow bridge was broken, requiring a jump on the downclimb and required several picket placements afterward. After that section, we were both sweaty in our puffy jackets. My face was hot in the bright reflection from the snow and I couldn’t wait to get back to camp to take off my baselayers, which was crazy given that I was just about the coldest I’d ever been a couple hours earlier.
The Cleaver was a bit of a mess of sloppy mushy snow already at 8am, and it took a lot of care to try not to knock any rocks down on the group below us. When we arrived back at Muir Camp at 10am, we were excited to be off the upper mountain. I went to the outhouse to change and to honestly just sit in the dark for a few minutes because the brightness of the sun and snow was overwhelming. After eating and packing up camp, we transitioned back to our skis and set off to Paradise, arriving back to the truck at about 2pm.
Although we had planned to drive a bit toward home that evening, I will be honest and say we did nothing of the sort and instead found a pull-off on a forest service road outside the national park and went to sleep at 4:30pm. What can I say, sometimes you just can’t make it all the way to mountaineer midnight.
Route, Maps & Logistics
We climbed Mount Rainier via the DC route, starting at the Paradise Wilderness Center. See Disappointment Cleaver route here.
Beta
- We left Muir Camp to start the climb at 11:30pm and summited at 5:30am. The sunny weather turned the snow weak and unsupportable by 8am, which made downclimbing more difficult. There was quite a bit of active rockfall in the Bowling Alley below the Cleaver and below Cathedral Gap around 9-10am when we passed through these areas on the way down. We reached Muir Camp at 10:00am, and it felt like the perfect time to be off the upper mountain. All to say, highly recommend starting as early as possible if the weather for your trip dates is projected to be warm and sunny.
- We skinned to Muir Camp to avoid postholing and to make the journey down to Paradise swifter. Lots of people were on skiis and lots of people were booting up to Muir Camp. The posthole didn’t look so bad if that’s your preferred method of transport!
- I got a gnarly sunburn on my face from this climb – the first time I’ve had my lips swell from a sunburn and hopefully the last. I was wearing 30 spf zinc sunscreen and reapplied every few hours, but clearly it wasn’t enough. Definitely recommend using high spf zinc sunscreen and reapplying as often as the bottle says, especially on those bluebird days!
