A Concurrent Affair

Our awesome climb leader Brett sent out a few more pictures from Sunday’s Cathedral Rock climb. I think we (the climbers and the mountains) look great!

And finally, I’ve also uploaded two videos to YouTube: one on the summit, one of the rappel down.

On Sunday, June 26, three other Mountaineers and I climbed Cathedral Rock. It was a perfect day: almost no clouds, a slight breeze that kept the bugs away, a few spots with cooling snow, and dry rock to climb on. There was a lot of loose rock, though, and I was at times kicking rocks down. We managed the rock fall risk by either scrambling really close together, so that a rock wouldn’t have time to pick up speed before it hit someone, or going one at a time.

From the summit, we could see the neighboring Mount Daniel, but also Mount Rainier, Mount Shuksan, and Glacier Peak (along with tons of other peaks).

On June 18, I joined a group of Olympia and Tacoma Mountaineers on a climb to Pinnacle Peak and The Castle.

Unfortunately, it had rained quite a bit the day before and it was still drizzling when we got there. We got to within a few dozen feet of the summit of Pinnacle, but decided to turn around. That decision was almost immediately validated as correct, as frozen rain and hail swept in.

We didn’t reach our summits, but it was still a great day in the mountains.

On June 1, Jenny and I summited Unicorn Peak in the Tatoosh range, just south of Mount Rainier. I had been particularly excited about this climb, because the Bench Lake/Snow Lake hike had been my first hike in Washington state, and aside from Mt. Si, it’s probably also the one I’ve done most often. I’ve looked up towards Unicorn Peak so many times, I just had to climb it.

We had the perfect day in the mountains. The snow started between the ridges, before we got to Snow Lake. It was a steep but relatively easy ascent up the gully and the snowfield. From the col to the west of Unicorn Peak, we could see the ever-present Mount Rainier, but also Mount St. Helens, Mount Hood, and Mount Adams. A four volcano spot! It was cool to see Mount St. Helens, since we had just summited it three days earlier.

We climbed across a small moat from the snow onto rock and made a relatively simple single-pitch ascent from the south. The rappel, also on the south side, was a bit weird, since the fall line carried us a bit far to the west, but it was still easy and enjoyable.

It was a great day with great people.

On May 29, Jenny and I climbed Mount St. Helens. This was the second time for me, after summiting in September 2013 via the Monitor Ridge route.

This time, we took the winter route, which is a few miles longer and follows the Wormflows to the east of the Monitor Ridge route, only to join the summer route a few hundred feet from the summit. The summer route had been opened just two days before, but we still wanted to use the winter route, and that was a great decision: While there were a bunch of hikers on the summer route, we saw only two skiers all day on the winter route

The visibility wasn’t as good as 2.5 years ago — Mount Hood was a constant companion, Mount Rainier was visible from the summit, though Mount Adams only peeked through the clouds occasionally — but the snow was beautiful. On the way down, we were able to glissade for about 3000 vertical feet. Epic.

On the way to our camp site on Saturday, we also visited the Johnson Ridge Observatory and the Ape Cave, a 2-mile lava tube. Both are well worth the visit.

In mid-April, my Mountaineers SIG went on a snow overnight field trip to Rainy Pass on the North Cascades highway. We summited Whistler Mountain, learned more about snow travel, built snow anchors and practiced crevasse rescue.

On the second day, I started having problems with my eyes, unfortunately, and two instructors had to walk me down the mountain. A slightly sad end to an otherwise perfect field trip.

This, though, is one of my favorite pictures:

Here are a few more pictures from our The Tooth climb taken by Brett, one of our fearless leaders.

Yesterday, my Mountaineers SIG (small instructional group) climbed to the summit of The Tooth, a granite peak near Alpental, just south of Source Lake.

This was my first multi-pitch alpine rock climb. The approach was harder than I thought, but the actual climbing was easier. Granted, it was only 5.4, but it is way more nerve-wracking when you’re several pitches up than on a crag or climbing wall.

The approach took us from the trailhead at about 3100 feet elevation to the base of The Tooth at 5300 feet. From there, it was four pitches up to 5604 feet. The first and second were long vertical rock climbing pitches with two or three pieces of protection. The third was a scrambling portion, and the last pitch was another short but steep rock climb with two fixed pieces and another placed piece of protection. We descended using four rappels and a short down-climb where we had scrambled up earlier.

I’m sore, but happy. This was an incredible day.

With the Mountaineers, I went on my first rock climbing trip. We climbed some of the crag columns in Vantage.

Along with several others, I climbed Shake It Don’t Break It (5.5), Feather in My Cap (5.6), and Ruffled Feathers (5.7).

I can’t wait to go back.

Jenny and I joined the Mountaineers Basic Alpine Climbing Course this year. It’s really a rush and a lot of fun to learn so many new things: knots, belaying, climbing, rappelling, crevasse rescue.

Here’s a picture of my SIG (small instructional group) practicing multi-pitch climbing, belaying, and rappelling:

And here I (yellow pants) just climbed up and am tying into the anchor at the top:

Two pictures of me rappelling down (orange jacket first picture, yellow pants second picture):

Jenny is always so calm and collected, and super strong:

I’ve been conditioning at Mt. Si this winter and made the hike several times.

• December 29, 2015: 2 hours, 3 minutes
• January 9, 2016: 2 hours, 7 minutes with heavier pack
• March 6, 2016: 1 hour, 47 minutes with heavier pack
• March 27, 2016: 1 hour, 45 minutes with Mountaineers training-weight pack!
• April 3, 2016, 1 hour, 40 minutes with Mountaineers training-weight pack!

I feel good.

My wonderful girlfriend was out of town, and the weather looked decent, so what could I do? Go hiking again. I would have done the same with her here (and gone together with her), but just because she’s not here doesn’t mean I can’t go, right?

I hiked to Camp Muir again. I was craving the thin air at 10,000 feet. The forecast called for freezing temperatures, pretty strong winds and a 30% chance of snow flurries at 11 AM or later, so I left home quite early, around 5:30 AM and had my boots on the trail a little after 8 AM.

At first, I was perhaps a bit slower than a few weeks ago, but I was at Pebble Creek at 9:15 AM. I made it to Camp Muir just before noon. I was wearing my new mountaineering boots for only the second time, and the first time, when I hiked up Mt. Si in them, they tore up my ankles. This time, I put a large waterproof bandage on my ankles, then a large patch of moleskin, and I taped all that together with medical tape around the heel and ankle. I also wore a thinner sock as liner and a thicker sock for insulation and cushioning.

It worked — my blisters didn’t get worse. Wearing the mountaineering boots allowed me to use my crampons. Wow, it was so much easier to get up the snow field in crampons. But on the other hand, it was also below freezing, and the snow field wasn’t melting anymore. All crevasses that I tested had frozen over and were solid. So maybe it would have been about as easy just with my regular hiking boots and without crampons as well.

I was somewhere around 9000 ft at 11 AM, and the winds had really picked up for the last half hour. At times, it was close to a white-out. I told myself I’d go to 9000 ft and then descend, but when I was there and ready to turn around, the weather improved markedly. I decided to continue another 1000 feet to Camp Muir.

Up there, it was really cold and windy this time. I took my glove off to take some pictures, and I had planned to check my blood oxygen saturation using a pulse oximeter, but it was too cold to continue to keep my glove off. I shoved a protein bar in my mouth and started the descent. On the way down, maybe to around 9500 ft, the weather was pretty bad. Near white-out again. But fortunately, I had a pretty good idea of where I needed to go, even without a map (I had given my paper map to another hiker who didn’t have one, and it was too cold to take my phone out). After that, the weather improved again and it was an easy way down the snow field.

When I got to the rocky part around 8000 ft, though, my heels started hurting quite badly. I don’t know if it’s the fat cushion or maybe the plantar fascia, or if maybe I had laced my boots too tight to avoid the heel slippage that had given me the bad blisters before. But my descent on the loose rocks was painful and slow. It got a bit better once I was past Pebble Creek again, but I wasn’t the fastest by any means. I was down at the car at 3 PM.

And when I was walking around with my backpack, helmet, ice axe, mountaineering boots, puffy, and gloves, being only the second person coming down from Camp Muir that day, I felt like a baller around the hoohas at the visitor center.

Windy, with snow flurries, on the way up to Camp Muir.

At Camp Muir in below freezing weather. The wind was blistering cold. I know, the hood goes over the helmet, but it was too cold to adjust it at 9000 ft.

So, what have I learned?

• Getting to Camp Muir when it freezes is easier than when it melts.
• If I tape up my ankles well, they last well over 8 miles in my La Sportiva Batura 2.0 GTX mountaineering boots.
• But after some time, the bottom of my heels start to hurt.
• Mountaineering boots and crampons on snow or ice: wonderful.
• Mountaineering boots and crampons on rocks: awful.
• Mountaineering boots on rocks: still bad.
  • I don’t have very good balance in them. Because the soles don’t bend at all, my foot is basically flat on the surface of the rock, and my leg goes with it.
• Mountaineering boots are a lot rougher on my knee when on rocks.
  • Because of the stiff sole, I can’t really ensure that I don’t pronate or roll my knee inward. If a rock I step on is lower in my middle and higher on the outside, my knee will rotate inward. This is bad and worrisome.
  • Should I put Superfeet Green insoles in my mountaineering boots? Those are the insoles I use to work against pronation in a lot of my other shoes. Or maybe Superfeet RedHot? Seems similar to the Green.
• Even when I’m wearing gloves, I need to tape up my middle finger to avoid getting blisters from the ice axe.
• It definitely helps to chug 1.5 liters of water when still at the car. No dehydration this time.
• I also had a Nalgene bottle with me, and that was good, because there were brief moments when my Camelbak line froze.
  • I’ve had that happen before, but it still always surprises me.
• I like the Premier Protein bars, especially the dark chocolate mint one, but they freeze close to solid.
  • I know, I should stick them in an interior chest pocket.
  • But they last a long time for me. Today, I had two bars during 7 hours of hiking, and that was enough to get me from 5 AM breakfast to 5 PM, when I had a nut bar in the car. During two days in the Enchantments, I had two servings of freeze-dried lasagna and four or five bars.
• For freezing temperatures, I need thicker gloves than the rappelling gloves.
• I should set up my hard shell’s hood to the correct helmet size before I absolutely need it.
• But I really like a lot of the equipment that I have: the Arcteryx Alpha FL jacket is probably the best jacket I’ve ever had. Wind-resistant and breathable. A joy to be in.
• The cheap Paradox merino blend base layer that I picked up at Costco works really well. Keeps me warm and dry. I already noticed that in the Enchantments.
• I need to somehow tuck in my pant legs when I’m wearing crampons.
  • Otherwise, I step on my pants with the crampon spikes. How? No idea.
  • How do I tuck them in with the Batura’s supergaiters? With regular gaiters, this wouldn’t be a problem. Ah, apparently you make sure the crampon straps go over the pants.
• I don’t like skiers in the national park.

Now I’m soaking in the tub with a big bowl of chicken soup, fortified with black beans and lots of hot sauce.

I hiked to Camp Muir at 10,000 feet on Mt. Rainier today! It was an amazing day.

I arrived at the Paradise Visitor Center a little before 10 AM, and it took me 4.5 hours up and 3 hours down. At the beginning I was quite fast, within an hour I was already past the High Skyline Trail headed towards Pebbel Creek. Another hour later I was at 8,000 feet and had passed the spot where I had taken an RMI mountaineering day school.

But from that point on, it got difficult. In the third hour, I didn’t quite make it to 9,000 feet. It was just too steep and slippery on the ice. And because my new mountaineering boots had torn up my heels two weeks ago, I was only wearing my regular hiking boots. And my crampons don’t fit on those. Once I slipped and had to self-arrest, just like I had learned it at the mountaineering day school.

To get from 9,000 to 10,000 feet, where Camp Muir is located, took me about 1.5 hours. It’s probably barely more than half a mile, but this is where the crevasses started. First, there were small, narrow ones, and I could hear the water rushing down in them.

But soon enough, there were pretty big transverse crevasses that were several feet wide and stretched hundreds of feet to either side. I had to zigzag through them, to the left, then between two crevasses back to the right, then when the next crevasse ended, back to the left again. This is where I definitely wished my mountaineering girlfriend were there with a rope.

I may have made a mistake here. The snowfield was initially much nicer in the west, so I headed over that way. On my way down, in the east, there were fewer transverse crevasses.

This big crevasse is at about 9,400 feet elevation, near the Anvil Rock.

A lot of the crevasses were snow-covered, but after my boot went through a snow bridge once, I decided to not cross them anymore. Look how long they are!

I reached Camp Muir a little before 2:30 PM. I had chosen 3 PM as time to turn around, regardless of where I was. At Camp Muir, there are a few buildings, solar cells, toilets, and so on.

Four other climbers were there as well, on the north side of Camp Muir, doing some crevasse exercises. The area north of Camp Muir, towards the Cadaver Gap, the Cathedral Rocks, and Little Tahoma Peak, is quite dramatic. Giant crevasses!

At 10,000 feet, it was difficult to catch my breath, even when doing nothing. The air is so thin! It’s an unusual feeling because it’s so unexpected. I think at first I almost mistook it for thirst.

On the way down, I slipped one more time and had to be quick with the self-arrest, because I really started to slide down fast. I think my RMI guide would have been proud. And I fell on my butt once, but not because it was steep, just because it was slippery. The mountaineering course was definitely worth it.

I was back at the car at 6 PM, eight hours after I had left.

On the first Sunday of April, we came back to the Mountain Loop Highway to get to Lake 22. It was only a few miles away from Mt. Pilchuck, but there was almost no snow. We were definitely overdressed. Granted, the Mt. Pilchuck hike started at around the same elevation as where Lake 22 is situated.

The waters of Lake 22 were absolutely still, so still, in fact, that pictures with the reflection in it look… wrong, somehow. And the steep cliff walls surrounding the lake made us feel very small.

At the beginning of April, I had a hiking double-header on the Mountain Loop Highway. Saturday I went up Mt. Pilchuck. I was surprised how much snow there was: close to 2 ft!

It was gorgeous and a good workout. Unfortunately, there were no good views from up at the fire lookout.

One of the most annoying things from my hikes early this year was going back and forth between the glare of the snow and the darkness of the woods. I kept taking off my sunglasses and putting them back on, sometimes once a minute. I decided I needed photochromic polarized sunglasses, and when REI had a sale, I snatched up a couple of Smith Backdrop models. One has amber lenses, the other has rose-colored lenses.

I went out to Alpental to figure out which ones I like better, but it’s really hard to decide. I think I like the rose-colored ones a tad bit better, but the amber ones glasses look better on me. I think I’ll keep them both and report more later.

At Alpental with Smith Backdrop polarchromic sunglasses with rose-colored Ignitor lenses.