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The Rainier Climb for Camp Joy has successfully completed and has raised more than the goal of $10,000 for the underprivileged children attending summer camp.

Thank you to all the wonderful folks that supported this cause and the team's efforts!

Rainier Climb for Camp Joy - Overview
August 2, 2005 – Training Day
Our first day at Mount Rainier began with the team preparing at the RMI Base camp in Ashford for Climbing School. The weather was beautiful, without a cloud in the sky. After grabbing a quick cup of coffee at Highlander’s, a local bar/restaurant, we loaded up in vans for the 45-minute ride into Mount Rainier National Park.

Our van ride ended at the parking lot of Paradise. Paradise is a beautiful old lodge at the base of Mount Rainier. It acts as the “base camp” for the National Park and is an old wooden, log cabin style hotel. It is huge. There are four stories, all wooden with natural stone foundations. While we were waiting to gather and start on our hike, we had a chance to walk into the hotel. The reception area must have been as large as a basketball arena. They had a family style cafeteria with the same old-fashioned wood look. The Climbing School gave us an overview of various techniques that will help us meet the challenges set forth by a climb of this difficulty and risk. Lindsay Reither and Jason Thompson were our trainers. They were both young but very experienced climbers. At about 10:30 AM, we started our hike to engage our climbing school training. The air was so clean and sweet smelling. The sun was bright and nature was at its best. The hike went through beautiful mountain pastures with over twenty-five kinds of wildflowers. The incline of the designated path was moderate and could best be described as an easy hike. Along the hiking trail we found our first resident animal. The hoary marmot is an interesting creature. It’s a mountain ground hog from a Midwesterner’s viewpoint. Always looking out on its hind legs, the Marmot jumped through the rocks and flowers stopping every few feet to look around to see if the path was safe. He was used to people since we were only a few yards away.

Training began with an introduction to much of our new gear, such as crampons, ice axes, and plastic boots. We were also taught important skills such as rest-stepping, ice axe arrest and pressure breathing.

Rest stepping is where you don’t leave your foot and leg in the air very long as you walk. Instead, you over-emphasize your step to then rest on your back and front leg so that each step you take, you also take a rest. Even though it was awkward, we later realized that without this technique, we would have never had the endurance to make it up to the summit. Pressure breathing is a high-altitude breathing approach that is now accepted as a standard way to increase your oxygen intake without hyperventilating. One can “pressure breathe” once every 5 or 10 steps depending on how much oxygen you are trying to intake and what altitude you are at. The higher up you go, the more frequent until towards the summit on some of the steeper inclines, most of us were pressure breathing every other step. With our training complete the team hiked back down to Paradise, loaded up in the vans, and headed back to the RMI Basecamp.

Morale was high as we had successfully completed our training. There were even comments from the team that it was "easy" and our expectations of difficulty for the summit climb were reduced. It wasn't until the following night that we realized that the difficulty of training pales in comparison to the actual climb.

August 3, 2005 - The Climb to Camp Muir
The sun and weather was just like the first day! You couldn’t have ordered a better morning for our first day of climbing towards the summit. Mother Nature was surely nice to us in an area where there is so much history of sudden weather changes. After a breakfast, equipment checklist and final preparation, we gathered our equipment and went to our assigned group location at the RMI Base Camp. It was here that we met our guide team: Adam, JD, and Mike. We also met our other climbing team members outside of our Camp Joy team: Bill, Steve and Chris.

Bill Cunningham was a nice congenial guy from San Diego. Chris Anthony was from Ventura, California and Steve Schwann was from the local Seattle area. Both Steve and Chris were experienced climbers although they had never climbed in the conditions of Rainier. Bill was an outdoorsman as well although he seemed to be more at home near the warm waters of the New Orleans Gulf of Mexico or the Pacific waters of San Diego. Chris was a businessman that had enough time on his hands where he had already been to every National Park in the US at least once and he was about 40 years old. Steve was a short Asian man, about 35 years old, strong and compact. All in all, we had a good team of willing and able climbers. Our complete team of 11 were loaded into the van at 8:30.

After taking about 45 minutes to get over to Paradise again, we unloaded and began to gather our team to prepare to start our 2-day journey to the summit of Mt Rainier.We started the climb to Muir from Paradise at a very light and easy pace. All of us had 2 walking poles each. The poles were a real godsend to help our knees and legs endure the pounding of a 5-hour hike up to Muir. The day was sunny and bright; the temperature was about 70 degrees. No wind at all. It was truly a perfect day to start our journey.

The hike from Paradise (5,400’) to Camp Muir (10,060’) is nearly 4.5 miles, and took us most of the first day. We traveled through a beautiful alpine zone, which was bursting with fantastic flower displays, and then onto the Muir Snowfield, named after John Muir who climbed the peak in 1888. The Snowfield is climbed for some 3,000 vertical feet, opening up to wooded lowlands and flanking glaciers. We usually climbed for about an hour followed by breaks of 10 to 15 minutes. We ended up getting to Muir about 3:30 pm in the afternoon.

It was still sunny although a light, chilly wind had started. Camp Muir is a very deceiving name. It is a camp since people are “camping”. It is also desolate. Very desolate. The main components are a sleeping room that was built with wood and tin roofing. The “hut” had no electricity, slept 30 or so on the climbing side, and about 12 on the guides’ side. Inside there is a three layer set of bunk beds made of crude wood where people sleep in rows of four. It was very tight accommodations, no ventilation, and no electricity. After a little dinner and some stretching it was time to get some rest before the push to the summit. We were given only 5 ½ hours of sleep and with the night really just beginning, our summit climb began. Without any electricity, only the headlights on the guides were the initial alarm clocks that started to light up the Muir bunkhouse. With about 25 people in the small bunkhouse, it was confusion as everyone started to get up all at once. Since our climbing team was last, we waited for the chaos to settle down before getting ourselves ready. Adam had told us that the climb was going to be a warmer one with very good weather conditions.

We assembled our equipment leaving our sleeping gear, our toiletries, extra food, and equipment that we didn’t need for the climb on our bunk beds. We put on our climbing boots, our gaiters which were made of Gore-Tex and extended up to our knees, and then our crampons once we were outside of the bunkhouse. The crampons are attached to the bottom of the climbing boot with about 12 2-inch metal points per foot. They ended up being not only effective in the snow and ice but also on the loose rock on the ascent as well. With our LED and halogen Headlights attached to our helmets, 2 layers of clothing to start the climb, and some oatmeal in our stomachs, the climbing teams were briefed by Adam. Steve Keck, Brooke Paul, and John Bostick were going to be with Adam. Steve Hinkel and Tom Kent were with Mike. JD was given the task of guiding the remaining climbers; Bill Cunningham, Steve Schwann, and Chris Anthony.

August 4, 2005 - Camp Muir to Disappointment Cleaver
We left Muir at 1:40 AM with our lights on our helmets as our only way to see through the dark. Roped into groups of 4, 4, and 3, we started up and down the snowy 12-inch paths that were made from hikers before us. Adam was our lead with Brooke then Steve Keck, and finally John Bostick as tail gunner. The summit ascent begins with a hike across the Cowlitz Glacier, onto the pumiced switchbacks of Cathedral Gap, and finally onto Ingraham Flats. Ingraham Flats is at about 11,000 feet. The area had a lot of crevices and large ice falls. We would not see them until the decent but you could sense that they were very close to our paths.

From time to time, the small lights on our helmets would give us glimpses of ice cliffs just feet from us that would go down some 200 feet in some instances. There was also an element of danger from falling rocks and falling ice and snow. Earlier in the day there were several occasions during our climb that we saw avalanches or rock slides. At this time we could only hear them due to the absolute darkness that was only penetrated by our headlamps. Even as difficult as this path was, the real test was yet to come.

Everyone that we had talked to and everything that we had read told us that Disappointment Cleaver was the real test. If you could make it up the “Cleaver,” you had a real shot at the top. It was early in Ingraham Flats when Tom Kent indicated that he was going to have to stop at the break. No one asked questions. Instead, Adam barked out an order to Tom and JD to have Tom get a bed cushion and sleeping bag to stay at the rest location while the team went on. Just further ahead, the nauseating feeling that Steve Hinkel had been having since Muir kicked into high gear and then Steve asked to stop as well. All of us were very serious and solemn knowing that Steve was making a very good decision to stop at this point. The last thing anyone wanted was to have a team member get ill or injured on the difficult areas to come. Adam again kicked into order mode and told JD to take Steve back down to Muir, pick up Tom on the way. He then ordered Mike to reassemble his team of the leftover group of Steve, Bill, and Chris.

We were now down to 2 climbing teams of 4 each: the one led by Adam in front and then the team led by Mike in arrears. The rest of Ingraham Flats was a combination of rocky paths and snowy ledges. We were all focused on the “next step” ahead of us and keeping our efficiency in rest stepping and pressure breathing.

Disappointment Cleaver
“The Cleaver” as it is known, starts at 11,400 feet and goes straight up the mountain to 12,300 feet. It can be all snow or, with a mild winter and a hot summer, can be half rocks and then snow as it was with our climb. We climbed for almost 2 hours in darkness zigzagging up the cleaver through rocky paths and then solid snow. It seems like the rocky paths had tighter turns while when the snow paths came, the lengths were more than 40 yards each. Finally, we made it to the top of the cleaver just as the eastern skies were starting to glow. The view was spectacular with the stars fading away and the sun starting to glow over the horizon.

High Break
High Break, 13,400 feet, we hit Ingraham Glacier. The sun was just starting to rise. It rose quickly into the sky giving us a full view of snowy Mt. Adams off in the distance. Mt. Adams is about 10,000 feet high but from the side of Mt. Rainier, it looked even larger than our mountain from our viewpoint. The scale and magnitude of the views were amazing. You truly have a sense of the enormous scale of Rainier and the Cascade mountain range when seeing it from almost 14,000 feet.

Columbia Crest, Crater Rim, at the Summit
The final ascent was kind of a blur. We had been hiking together for over 5 ½ hours knowing that our last leg was only minutes away. The sun was high up; our glacier sunglasses were on so as to not burn our eyes with the brightness of the snow and sun. The routine of zigzagging back and forth had become almost as routine as running on a track.

Suddenly, Bill Cunningham was struggling with a lack of energy in the group behind us. All of us were giving him encouragement on top of Mike’s professional guidance. I really think it was Adam who laid it on the line for Bill. “We’re not leaving you here” and “we’re not stopping” were his two pieces of communication. It was obvious that Bill was in pain and his body was desperately seeking oxygen and subsequently energy. After starting and stopping several times, Bill kept up and continued to make the ascent with his team.

It was here that the pressure breathing technique paid off. Without it we would be unable to get enough oxygen into our systems to feed the muscles that were to carry us the last few hundred vertical feet. We made it to the rim of the volcano at 6:50 AM on Thursday morning. It was a terrific feeling. We saw 2 other groups still at the summit including a private group led by the celebrity Ed Viesturs of the Into Thin Air bestseller about the disaster of a 1996 climbing expedition of Mt. Everest. Ed was with us at Base Camp throughout our entire stay in Ashford. He recently completed the last of the 14 8,000 meter high mountains without supplemental oxygen.

At the rim, steam was venting through rocks in the part where we came in. The rest of the rim had lots of snow expect for the opposite side, which was the highest point at 14,410 feet. There was a large steam release from this side making the very top rocky instead of snow-capped. From the rim, we then walked to the center of the volcano. We took off our packs and rested. Steve Keck, Adam, and John then ventured off to the highest point, which was about a 20 minute walk.

Following a short rest we took some celebratory pictures of the Camp Joy team, put on our backpacks, and initiated our decent. We had spent a total of about 55 minutes on the summit. Adam led us in the same order with John bringing up the rear.

The Decent from the Summit
Descending uses a complete new set of leg muscles. All of us were relieved that the calf muscles were getting a reprieve. Now, our knees and upper leg muscles were going to take the task. Another climbing technique we had been taught is called “plunge stepping.” This is a “heel first” step down where we make sure that we get a solid step into the now-warming snow. It was very important to concentrate on each step. We were back roped in and climbing down. Any one person slipping could easily make an accident of the whole team. We were very careful not to rush ourselves.

We occasionally had difficulties at a switch-back. Sometimes John would get yanked at the corner angle upsetting his balance. With the light we could finally see some of the hazards we had avoided a few hours before in the dark. Again the scale of the mountain was shown. From our vantage point we could see Little Tahoma peak. We’re not sure why it’s called “little” since if it were considered on its own, Little Tahoma would be the third-highest peak in Washington State. In addition, we could see the massive crevasses that make up part of Ingraham glacier. The descent took us about 2. 5 – 3 hours to Muir.

Climbing down Ingraham glacier was fairly easy although the mushiness of the snow was a different but challenging task. We then snaked our way through Disappointment Cleaver, through the rocks that were harder to pass through going down then up (although it was light now which helped us). Finally, we descended through the flats where we could hear the rocks and snowy ice creak and crack with the sun bearing down on them. This again was a dangerous fall-zone and could easily have sent a rock or ice down at us.

Camp Muir and repacking
After about 10 hours since leaving camp, we finally made our way back to Muir. The temperature kept climbing as we kept descending. The sun was hot on top of us without a cloud in the sky. From earlier that day with 4 solid layers of top clothing, most of us stripped down to our bottom layer or, if we still had a fresh t-shirt, put a new fresh top on. After gathering all of the beddings and assorted equipment that we left at Muir, and putting our crampons away, we started our way back down.

The Decent from Camp Muir
It was very mushy and slippery. That, combined with the previous 10 hours of climbing, made the descent very precarious. One had to walk, jump, and slide through the wavy white-capped snow field. When we came up to the most stepper declines, some of the team used “trash bag sleds” to slide on their butts with their packs on in order to make it down easier and faster. We made it down through the snow field in about 1 ½ hours before taking a break. Taking a final break at Pebble Creek, we put on our lighter shoes and stowed the heavier climbing boots.

Just like the ascent, we were once again in the beautiful summer wild flowers of the mountain sojourn. The entire journey from Muir was to take us 2 ½ hours. This portion of the trip was very tough. With the fatigue of little sleep, low oxygen, and muscles that weren’t cooperating, the last portion of the trip was the very difficult.

Paradise at last!!!
We arrived at the National Park Service parking lot at 3:30 PM on August 4th. All parties were loaded onto the van with a huge cold cooler of water available for all to re-hydrate themselves. Several of us blinked off during the final 45-minute descent down the park roads back to base camp. Looking at the large fairly dried up streams, it was now very apparent that the spring melt places a lot of melted snow down the passages and into the fields below. Rich pine forests surround the mountain with beautiful flowers and stream abounding everywhere you look. We arrived back at Base Camp at 4:30 PM. Mike had called into the Base Camp deli an order for 3 large Italian pizzas. When we got there, they were ready with several pitchers of Moose Drool beer and local IPA-style hoppy beer. It was still a beautiful day and such a great celebration with Mike and Adam toasting to our success. JD stayed at Muir to take another group up that night.

A two-night stay at “Hotel Muir” is quite a task for anyone even if they are young and strong like JD. After our celebration, some team members went to bed, going to sleep probably about 8:30. The rest of the guys stayed up and talked, watched a magnificent western sunset from the quaint porch of our bunkhouse, enjoyed a soak in the hot tub and reminisced about our wonderful 3 day-expedition.

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