The ride to Paradise was uneventful, except that it was one of the free weekends in Mt. Rainier National Park so we avoided the entrance fee – nice. Overnight parking required a half a mile walk down the hill from the Paradise Inn. We registered with the park service rangers and were able to reserve a night at Camp Muir and a night at Ingraham Flats. We were feeling thankful about this as sometimes getting reservations of your choice is hard (especially during busy good weather periods).
At roughly 6,000 feet with the mountain behind meAfter praying for safety and a healthy return to our wives and families, we departed from Paradise at about 10:30am. I was carrying almost 50 pounds, including my climbing gear (harness/etc., picket, ice axe, helmet, crampons), sleeping bag/pads, stove, water, food for 3 days, extra clothes for colder (higher) temps, etc. It was a beautiful day expected to hit the mid-80s. From our starting point at 5,400 feet to 7,200 feet (Pebble Creek), there was very little snow on the ground and tons of people. The crowds started to thin out as we continued our ascent, and we hit snow just above 7,200 feet. The Muir snowfield was in good shape as we headed up – we arrived at Camp Muir (10,100 feet) at about 3pm. Views of Mt. Adams, Mt. Hood and Mt. St. Helens, all to our south, were gorgeous. Ben and I found a good spot to drop our stuff, set up camp and spent the next couple of hours melting snow to boil water for the night’s and next day’s use.
Camp Muir at 10,100 feet and our home for the first night
Another view of Muir and the public shelter up on the hill
Our tent home for the night - notice the climbing route in the snow behind it
And here's a better view of the start of the route, across the Cowlitz Glacier and onto the gray rocks of the Cathedral Gap. From there it's a left turn and on up to Ingraham Flats
A view up to Cadaver Gap (from Muir) and in-between the two rock ribs: the Disappointment CleaverAfter all of the time I have spent outdoors, I am finally learning how to manage my food consumption to keep my body well-fueled and to keep a climb energized. Mostly, I bring foods that I like to eat, as nerves and altitude both contribute to a general lack of interest in eating. It’s pretty easy to burn 700-1,000 calories in an hour of steady climbing, so over our 4,700 foot climb from Paradise (parking lot) to Camp Muir, we easily burned 3-4,000 calories. This is why I dropped about 4-6 pounds over the 3-day climb. For this climb, I brought sour gummy worms, Milky Way and Snickers Candy Bars, a trail mix with M&M’s, two McDonald’s breakfast burritos with mild salsa, a freeze-dried and very yummy lasagna meal, three cans of Starbucks Doubleshot (one before each climb segment), two bottles of Ensure Plus (great meal replacement calories I used to charge up my system after the harder climb sections) and a bunch of Kool-aid mini-packets to add to my Nalgene bottles to get sugar back into my system.
Partly because we were tired from the climb up to Muir, and partly because we both have busy home lives (Ben has a three-week old newborn at home and I have my three two and unders), we were in the tent by about 6pm to catch some z’s. I slept pretty fitfully, as I always do in a tent on a mountain, and mostly laid there from 12-2 as parties around us prepared and left for their summit bids (many folks, including the guided Rainier Mountaineering Inc. groups, leave from Muir rather than the higher Ingraham Flats camp). We were up and going again by about 6am, in part because there were a bunch of alpine “bee-flies” buzzing the tent and getting us up early. I call them “bee-flies” because they are annoying and persistent like flies, but they look a lot like bees. Who knows what they actually are.
At any rate, they woke us up and kept us up with their buzzing. We got up and broke down the tent and camp and packed up to leave for Ingraham Flats. We were entering the first part of the climb that is on a glacier, so we put on the harnesses and roped up, put on the helmets (rock-fall danger is an issue) and traded the trecking poles for ice axes. We left Muir and spent the next hour (give or take) crossing the Cowlitz Glacier and heading up a steep rocky slope called Cathedral Gap. Once you are standing on top of the Gap, you get a great view of Mt. Tahoma (which is 11,100 feet tall and is the black and rocky protrusion on the East side of Mt. Rainier) and on down the Ingraham Glacier, which is very broken up and full of building-sized ice blocks and gaping bottomless crevasses this time of year. Keeping all of this on your right, we crept up the ridge and trudged up to Ingraham Flats at roughly 11,000 feet on the Southeast slopes of Mt. Rainier. We found a good spot for camp and setup for a long day of waiting for our summit bid. We kept ourselves busy by melting more snow and boiling water, prepping our gear, and laying in the tent.
My climbing partner and friend Ben when we arrived at Ingraham Flats. The Ingraham Glacier is behind him (the summit is hidden behind the false summit seen in this pic) 
Here I am before we set up camp (with the Disappointment Cleaver rock rib behind me - we would be climbing this "spine" of rock in another 12 hours' time)
A clear view of the Ingraham Glacier (notice the climbers coming down from the Disappointment Cleaver)
The Disappointment Cleaver rock rib annotated with red loosely marking the route over snow, ice and rock
The view to the north/north-east from Ingraham Flats - notice the massive ice blocks on the left side of the frame
From our camp at Ingraham Flats - looking at Mt. Tahoma, an 11,150 foot subsidiary peak of Mt. Rainier'sEven though I had hauled the lightweight “Practicing the Presence of God” book up to 11,000 feet, I had exactly zero interest in the book. I was feeling very low energy, maybe because of the previous day’s work, maybe because of the altitude. It was hot in the tent, but I spent most of the afternoon in there trying to catch some sleep and listening to Pierce Pettis on the iPod. Even though I had only been gone from home for about 36 hours now, I was missing Kelly, K, G and S. Pierce’s “Neutral Ground”, one of Kelly’s and my favorite songs, made me miss her, and then “My Little Girl” came on. Such an emotional song for me as it’s about a Daddy trying to protect his little girl’s heart as she grows up.
Kelly knows how much I miss my family when I’m gone (this trip was the longest I think I’d ever been gone from them), so she sent me up with a picture of the family, which I wanted to take to the summit like a sponsor’s flag, and a picture of K&G. Kelly wrote the most amazing note on the back of the family picture which was a constant encouragement. She said: “Jason, I’m so excited for you! You CAN do this!! If you lose your strength, pray that God Himself would be your refuge and strength, your very present help in trouble. I love you no matter what and miss you so much! We all love you and are praying for your safe return. Love, Kel.” I even shared the note with Ben to encourage him.
Knowing we were getting up at around 11pm to depart at midnight, we got ready to go to bed at around 6pm. I had been messing with my phone on the way up – it never seems to work on the mountain although I hear stories of people using them to call 911 to alert Rangers in emergencies. So I knew some phones worked. Anyway, I was messing with settings to try to expand the phone beyond 3G to its other more comprehensive settings. I had shut it off earlier when it wasn’t picking anything up. Around 6:30pm on Monday eve before our summit bid, I turned it on and apparently turning it off and back on reset it to the new more comprehensive range. It was picking up some newly received texts from Kelly, my Dad and Shawn Stinson. And a sweet voicemail from Kelly. And – oh joy! – my work email. Since I was on vacation (although not a very relaxing one!), I ignored the work email and texted back Kelly, my Dad and Shawn. My Dad had written a nice text telling me he loved me and that he and my Mom were praying for safety. Ben was able to call his wife and check in on her and his newborn son. I called Kelly and in classic Kelly fashion was unable to reach her on either the home phone, her cell phone, or even her Mom’s phone. I shot her a couple of texts and voicemails, though, and was able to tell her I loved her and that we were leaving for the summit in only four to five hours. It was so great to hear her voice even on her voicemail. I did get this text from her before we left for the summit, though, which was encouraging: “I am so mad i missed your call!! I am so proud of you! I wish you knew how many times we have prayed for you. Tonight G asked me to pray for you!”
We went to bed and got some nervous “wake every 20 minutes” sleep. It seemed windy outside, but wasn’t too bad when we got up at 11pm. It was very dark outside as the moon was just a sliver in the night sky. We were thrilled to see a cloud-free and incredibly star-filled sky. Some groups around us (there were probably three or four other occupied tents at our camp) were stirring, and Ben and I got moving fast. We were hoping to be the first ones on the route, but only just ahead of another rope team of two (to increase our margin of safety and theirs). Although I had been nervous during the day before, and during the sleeping hours ahead of departure, now that we were up and moving, I was all business and not worried much anymore. Just ready to climb and be on a part of the route I’d never been on. I was carrying my regular pack, but it was much lighter, with some food, about three liters of water, a down coat as an emergency bivy, a picket and the usual ten essentials (first aid, firestarter, etc.). I was actually wearing a lot of my other gear (crampons, helmet, headlamp, rope, harness, ice axe).
We flipped on the headlamps to light the route ahead of us; We prayed and asked Jesus for safety and wisdom. Ben led our little rope team and we were on our way. First ones off. No one would pass us and we would have the mountain eerily to ourselves. We climbed straight up several hundred feet and cut hard right after getting around a large and deep crevasse. We had to step over a couple of deep but not wide (maybe 9-12 inches) crevasses, then headed down towards the Disappointment Cleaver rock section. Ben had told me this was possibly the crux part of the climb. 1,200 to 1,500 feet of rock and steep snow slopes depositing you on the top of the Cleaver.
We stepped off of the glacier and onto this steep and huge “rib” of rock (the Cleaver) that stands like a giant nose on the side of Mt. Rainier. We searched with our headlamps to find the wands (small flags) marking the route on the rock, and we steadily climbed up. Back and forth through the rocks, sometimes using one hand and one ice axe. The rock loomed above us even darker than the moonless sky – those were the places where the night sky was not peppered with stars. A huge crash of rocks fell behind us as we made our way up the rock and I prayed silently for the two men behind us, that they were safe and not close to the heavy rockfall. Routefinding was difficult, but our headlamps would occasionally reflect the wands the National Park Service rangers and commercial guides had left to mark the way. After 20-30 minutes of making our way through the rocks, we were able to find the exposed switchbacks up the side of the Cleaver. Roughly thirty more minutes later and we had come to the top of the Cleaver, where the slope lessened (if only temporarily). It was about 1:30 in the morning and we were coming to “the ladder”.
The ladder had become a bit infamous in my mind. The day before several guys coming down from the summit had said, “watch out for the 2x8 over the three foot wide bottomless crevasse. That was enough to make me nervous. Although one guys said he had simply jumped it, which made me less nervous (if it was jumpable then the plank crossing couldn’t be too bad). Then others who came down said not to worry, it was now a 4 foot crevasse, but that the rangers had put down a ladder with two 2x8’s on it. Good, no worries. When we arrived at the ladder, it became clear where it was going to be, because the whole section of the route was very broken up. Huge house-sized blocks of ice all around and a couple of deep but not wide crevasses to step over. Then ninety degrees to the right and an 8-foot ladder laid down over a three and a half to four foot wide gaping crevasse. I didn’t look down on my first trip over it (knowing there would be another on the way back). You could almost feel the depth through the blackness though. I kept the rope taut as Ben crossed and he for me. It was just baby steps as the sharp points of our crampons grasped the wood planks. Then a left turn and across a snow bridge that was preserving the route across another large crevasse brother to the one we had just crossed.
The ladder and the snowbridge, both crossing large "bottomless" crevasses
A closer look as we approached (actually these were taken on the way down so we had already crossed over)
A close-up looking down into the crevasse (wish I had leaned out a little further so you could see the blackness down below) - notice the marks left by crampon points of crossing climbers
This is the view of the ice-fall to our left as we are crossing the ladder - these are house-sized chunks of ice so it's a pretty intimidating jumble of glacier
Close-ups of some of the ice-fall around us
After crossing over the ladder and the snowbridge (visible in the bottom-right corner), the route traversed across the mountain to avoid some large ice-fall sections (including one that had already collapsed over the route) - you can see the bootpack in the picture outlining the route the Rangers have suggestedThen the route opened up. A long flat section across the side of the mountain over to the shoulder of the Emmons Glacier. There was a fair amount of exposure below us, but the climbing was easy, the weather pleasant and wind light. At one point I realized the route was crossing over a large ice block that had a long fall on the right and a deep crevasse on the left. Pretty crazy. Sort of a two foot wide tightrope walk with a backpack, heavy boots and gear on. But my ice axe had plenty of purchase on the left to keep me secure and connected to the mountain.
After continuing out towards the Emmons glacier on this long traverse, the route finally traversed left and we began a long series of switchbacks. 20 minutes of climbing South and then a right turn and 20 minutes of climbing North. Back and forth. Back and forth. My eyes focused on keeping the rope in front of me out of the way of my crampons, taking step after step to keep the distance between me and Ben steady so that the rope wouldn’t bunch up if I got going too fast, or didn’t go too taut and pull on him. I had plenty of cardiovascular strength in the tank, but was feeling hungry (I had only had a small Starbucks doubleshot when we left camp) and a little low energy. Ben and I stopped a couple of times to drink some water and I hit a small tube of Clif Bar energy goo.
This is not my pic, but one I found online illustrating the view from the top of the Disappointment Cleaver
Also not my pic - does a good job of showing the traverse across the side of the mountain once leaving the Cleaver
One more (also not my pic) illustrating the route's wandering to avoid large crevasses - this was very similar to our day on the mountain
Not my pic, but illustrates well the exposure as well as the route's meandering around large ice blocks that are a routine part of this heavily glaciated peak Somewhere around 2:30-3:00am, we were at roughly 13,000 feet. I added a layer of gloves and put my beanie hat on underneath my helmet. We were making good progress fast and the guys who left 5 minutes behind us were now nowhere to be seen. It was like we had the upper reaches of Mt. Rainier all to ourselves. Pretty amazing feeling. I was still trying to manage my food intake and was popping bites of a candy bar, but was still feeling low-energy. Ben kept me on my toes though as we kept a pretty relentless pace and did not stop to rest more than 30 second “catch your breath” rest-stops. 1,411 feet to go.
Once we got to about 13,500 feet at about 3:30am, I realized that I was looking at the altimeter way too much and was only discouraging myself. Rather than looking and thinking “whoa, we’re already at 13,300?”, I was looking and thinking “what? we’re only at 13,100?”. I decided to start counting my steps and counted about 250 steps per 100 feet of vertical. So, that gave me a number to shoot for every 100 feet and made the time pass. Finally, out of the slowly lightening sky I could see rock formations up above us that I thought might be the crater rim. I knew we were at around 13,800, so only another 600 vertical feet to go, maybe half an hour or so. I could do that no problem. What seemed like only five or so minutes later, we stepped over the crater rim at 14,100 feet. I was actually shocked because I was expecting and bracing for a longer climb. I had been told that once you crested the crater rim it was a FLAT walk to the true summit, which would have meant we were basically done going up once we crested the crater rim. I quickly realized that the true summit was not only on the other side of the very large crater (maybe the size of two football fields in diameter?), but also another 300 vertical feet up. This was very demoralizing. We were now walking very slowly and still needing to stop every five minutes to rest and catch our breath. There were some small crevasses even on the summit that we stepped over, and a large open “snow-cave” on one side. Just before the summit, we stepped off of the snow and onto some rock that was covered in delicately wind-shaped ice. Ben stepped on the ice and the intricately-connected ice snapped like a frozen rope making a sharp whipping noise that startled me (given that on glaciated peaks I am highly paranoid about crevasse falls).
Not my pic (it was dark when I was there!), but this is what the inside of the summit crater looks like
One more that is not my pic, but illustrates the path through the crater (the other side is the "low" side, pic is taken from the high side, although the pic makes it look more gradual than it felt!) But it was just a noise and we continued on up to the true summit of Mt. Rainier at 14,411 feet at 4:51am on July 21st, 2009, four days after my 34th birthday, having left camp at 12:20am (GPS said it had taken four hours and twenty-seven minutes). It was a very exciting moment for me and the fulfillment of a decade-long dream and long pursuit of climbing and mountaineering skills and outdoor experience-building. The summit (called Columbia Crest) was pretty large (maybe 50 feet in diameter?) and you could see “the other two” summits of Mt. Rainier, including the slightly lower Liberty Cap (14,112 feet) and the crater rim (called Point Success, 14,158 feet), that we had just crossed over. Although the wind was not strong, it was still cold on top, especially because the sun was not out yet. The sun was just coming up over the horizon and the sky was a mix of black and orange. We could see what was probably the town of Puyallup to our Northwest, and we snapped some pictures as the sun slowly began to rise. It was an amazing feeling to have the summit to ourselves – not another soul in sight.
Me on the summit with my family photo
Self-portrait of the climbing partners (alone on the summit)
The sun rising over Puyallup and Seattle (not visible); if you look carefully you can see the curve of the earth on the horizonAfter ten to fifteen minutes on the summit, we returned back down to the crater and tried to call our wives (even though it was 5:15am). Cell phone reception was not great and we were cold so we got going again. We crossed over the crater lip and headed back down. Maybe fifteen minutes from the crater lip, we ran into the party of two other climbers headed up. We stopped and said Hi and wished them well, continuing down. Over the next hour or so, we moved off the route a number of times to let other parties pass (on their way up), including five to six guided parties of three. As the sun rose and we continued to come back down, it got very very hot. We began to delayer and tried to keep up with our water intake needs. It was actually really amazing to see the difficult and crevasse-ridden terrain we had ascended earlier that morning. Huge portions of the mountain were covered in house-sized chunks of ice and the route crossed around and occasionally below these massive features.
Sometime around 6:30-7:00am we got back to the snowbridge and ladder crevasse crossing just above the Disappointment Cleaver. It was pretty wild to see it in the daylight and to carefully look over the lip of the large crevasse into the deep deep opening. We continued down onto the Cleaver and made quick work of the switchbacks and back onto the rock section. We were anxious to get out of the dangerous higher sections that are prone to melting and shifting (not to mention rockfall) in the hot sun. After some quick routefinding, we quickly but gingerly made our way down the rock section and back onto the glacier, climbing up and around a very large (maybe a hundred yards long and twenty feet wide?) crevasse that we had passed in the night climb up, hopped a few small ones and then made a long straight downward slog back to camp. We arrived at camp at roughly 8:30am, pretty tired, but motivated to pack up and get down. I was thrilled to get to call Kelly and report the good news – knowing that she has been my biggest supporter for my climbing goals. We broke down camp, threw it all on our backs, roped up again for the final section of rock and glacier, and descended back to Camp Muir. We were there by around 11am and spent about an hour there boiling water to drink and recuperating a bit. We left Muir at about 12:30 and were back down to Pebble Creek (the bottom of the Muir snowfield) at about 1:30pm after making quick work of the snowfield (dropping 3,000 vertical feet in an hour by doing standing slides and by careening down as fast as we could make ourselves go). The sun was hot and we were tired, so it was a real highlight to take my shirt off and put it, my hat and my head in the icy glacier-melt water of Pebble Creek.
An hour and a half later (including a missed turn on the trail that took us out of our way) we were back at Paradise among the hundreds of tourists there to visit the mountain. It was a gorgeous day, and hot, and we had been on the move for fifteen hours now, and we rejoiced to reach every climber’s goal: the flip-flops in the back seat of the car that you trade for your big old climbing boots. Success! We also made quick work of a couple of Cokes from the Visitor’s center and headed back home to our wives, children and loved ones.
It was very exciting for me to finally get to the top of Mt. Rainier. It was exciting not only to summit, but to do it in a small independent party of two. It was amazing to have the weather we had. It was incredible to have the upper mountain to ourselves and a quiet summit. It was very fulfilling to know that months and months of running and training had paid off on summit day. In my pre-climb training, I had achieved my personal running goal of being able to run five consecutive eight-minute miles and it made the physical/cardiovascular part of summit day very manageable. There was more in the tank when I got to the top and more in the tank when I got back to the car (I ended up feeling good enough to go home and go swimming in Lake Sammamish with the kids, and stayed up until midnight that night with Kelly (up 24 straight hours, including 15 at a very high level of output)).
Additionally, it was a day of great thanks for me. I was thankful for great weather (including light wind on summit day), particularly great weather that coincided with a trip we had planned for Kelly’s Mom Leta to come out and help her with the kids while I was gone. I was thankful for Leta coming all the way out to Seattle to help Kelly and keep her company (how amazing is that!). I was thankful that I had finished up a big presentation at work the Friday before my trip and didn’t have to worry about work. I was thankful that my climbing partner Ben had been able to go, even though he and his wife had just had their first baby several weeks before. I was thankful that my phone had worked at Ingraham Flats (to be able to call Kelly and to have the ability to call 911 and reach park rangers if necessary). I was thankful that the two guys camping near us at Ingraham Flats wanted to leave at a similar time in order to have more safety margin (they could help us if needed and we could help them). I was thankful that Camp Muir was available on the first night and Ingraham Flats on the second night (sometimes they fill up). I was also thankful to have the vacation time to get to do a three day Sunday to Tuesday climb that made it more manageable and fun (and it also meant I was able to spend Saturday with Kelly, K, G and S, making the days away from them more bearable (especially since two of them would have been work days anyway)). I was also thankful for my climbing partner Ben’s rope leadership and company on the climb.
And I was particularly thankful for two people: Jesus for his encouragement and strength throughout both this climb and the years of climbing building up to this one. And for the safety net He put around us to get us safely up and back home.
And I am especially thankful to Kelly for all of her love and encouragement to me over the years to go chase and reach my outdoor adventure / climbing dreams. Kelly has worked quite a few Saturdays when I might have been home helping her with the kids, instead sacrificing to let me go do training hikes and summits and summit attempts. So I am very very thankful to her, which is why I wanted my summit picture to include her and my family.
To wrap up, let me say this: on my way down the mountain, I remember plotting, as I do on almost every climb, how to go about selling my mountaineering gear. Climbing, for me, is an incredible chance to get outdoors and worship not the creation, but the Creator. The vastness of a place like Mt. Rainier is readily felt when you go through the experience of climbing it. And that vastness reflects the incredible height and breadth and grandeur of all of the attributes of God. But in addition to that beauty, climbing is about suffering and you have to love to endure to be successful, even in little ways, at it. And inevitably that suffering gets to me and I wonder why I do it and plot ways to stop doing it. Then.... I get back to the car and I drink a huge carbonated and high-sugar beverage, and I take off those blasted boots, and lean back in my seat, and start talking and dreaming about the next climb, the next route, the next mountain. It’s a crazy and addictive sport and I am an addict.
So, until the next climb, thanks for reading my account!
The route as tracked by my GPS (starting at Ingraham Flats and going to the summit and back down again)
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