Decisions on Mt Rainier
Wind and snow rushed over the crater rim, creating an effect much like being in a snowglobe. We were transitioning from crampons to skis at 14,000ft (4,200m in engineering units) on Mt Rainier, mainland USA’s highest volcano. It should have been a special moment, but instead I’d just vomited, had a pounding headache, and was in full fight or flight mode.
It had taken four years and three attempts to get there, with previous trips derailed by metres of fresh snow and high winds. This spring brought a heatwave instead, with the local weather station at Seattle-Tacoma Airport breaking temperature records, making for starkly different mountain conditions.
In the parking lot outside the Paradise Ranger Station myself, Tashi Hackett, and Alec Getzloff, stirred up an evening feed in the Jet Boil. Over dinner we discussed just how early to wake up in the ‘morning’ and move from our chosen sleeping spot in the open air of the carpark. That sounds grim, but we had a soft pink sunset and guitar riffs from a local guy trying to sweep his date off her feet to fall asleep to, so it wasn’t all bad. We settled on waking up at 11.30pm (in two hours time) to start up the mountain by midnight, so being woken by morning tourists wasn’t going to be an issue.
At 12 on the dot Tashi took off quickly, putting his lanky legs to work. It’s 2,750 metres of elevation gain from Paradise at 1,646m to the summit of Mt Rainier at 4,392m, with the climb commonly completed in two to three days. We’d given ourselves 12 hours, hence the fast pace. It was working though, we found ourselves cruising through Camp Muir at 3000m elevation well before dawn, swapping to crampons and a rope for glacier travel shortly thereafter.
Today was my turn to be ‘crevasse donkey’ - the one at the front to find holes and get unceremoniously hauled back out. The route was well trodden by guided groups though, with himalayan style ladder bridges over a couple of widening crevasses the closest we got to drama. This was simply a one foot in front of the other endurance effort, at least until the route finding during our ski down.
It turns out just moving your foot can get really hard - my speed and health fell off a cliff at 3600m. I’d been living close to sea level in New Zealand, flown to the USA two weeks earlier, and now my body was rebelling with the first signs of altitude sickness.
We trudged another 200 metres, then Tashi and Alec called an intervention. I was sloth-like and slurring words. If they had any say in the matter (they did) I was going to take some altitude meds, now. After a couple of small pills and some water I was muttering arrogantly back at them through the altitude haze in my head - “it’s fine, I could ski down this in my sleep.”
Back to everest stepping I went, moving slowly upwards. We crested the crater rim and eyed an approaching cloud bank. The top of our ski line was on the low side of the crater and we made the decision to stop there, transition, and ski while we could still see the crevasses in front of us. Trudging over the crater to the true summit would’ve been an extra half hour, and our bet was that cloud would ruin all visibility by then. Plus I was still sick. Midway through pulling goggles on my nausea rose, then as I pulled touring skins off my skis I vomited the last of my liquid into the snow. It was time to go down.
While a summit is nice, we were really there for the almost 3000 metre ski descent down the classic Fuhrer Finger line, which we hoped to have timed for great spring snow conditions. We arced turns down the summit snow cap, then were thankful we could still see to navigate through the crevasse field where the Nisqually glacier rolls over into an icefall. The finger itself is a rockwalled chute between two glaciers. It presents a clean ski line, but can also be a gun barrel funnelling ice and rockfall. The heatwave was back in action and even at 9am in the morning rocks were rolling. There was a procession of people climbing up the finger, so we carefully chose our line to avoid endangering them from above.
Out of the gun barrel we paused to enjoy it. All that was left was some rolling skiing back to the car, and having dropped two thirds of our elevation I was already feeling far healthier. Gloppy snow was the final crux, when you hit a patch that had been particularly sun affected it felt like someone was reaching out to grab your feet. In the meantime cloud had fully blanketed the summit.
We got back to the car at 10am, chuffed with our work and feeling like a million dollars compared to at the top of Rainier just 45 minutes ago. Tashi shotgunned the mandatory Rainier beer with his ice axe, then we gear exploded, repacked, and rallied to the Copper Creek Inn at the edge of the National Park to debrief over a hard-earned feed and bottomless coffee.
Our takeaways:
Looking after the team (and a good med kit) kept me just healthy enough
Resisting summit fever made for a safer and more enjoyable ski while we could still see
Climbing up the more open lower angle Ingraham Direct route and descending the Fuhrer Finger minimised the primary objective hazard of rockfall
Rainier is a mountain of many moods that very much deserves respect
A swim in the glacial melt and nap by the river followed, which we all agreed was how every good trip should finish.
Epilogue
Rainier continues to trial and educate the crew - the trip recounted above was in May 2023, and 12 months later Tashi thought it wise to camp near the summit without a sleeping bag. They were not in a heatwave, so hindsight provides entertainment and lessons learned, well told in this article by Spencer Harkins for Samaya.
