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Home > Travel > Seattle > Rainier IVA: After an full hour at the RMI ( Rainier Mountaineering Inc.) office trying to figure out what we need and don't need to rent, we spent Friday hiking one hour up to the first snow fields where we spent the day training how to walk efficiently (this came unbelievably helpful later!), how to travel as a group connected by ropes, how to use crampons and an ice axe and how to self arrest should we be sliding down the glacier (and trust me, there are plenty of places to fall and slide to your death along the route). We returned to Ashford for the night, and the second day started out again from Paradise, this time with 45 lbs on our backs, including 5-pound (each) plastic mountaineering boots that we swapped with our lighter shoes about an hour into the hike. The first hour took us through beautiful alpine meadows above paradise, with Rainier towering right above us. In total, it took us about 5 hours, including 4 15-minute breaks, to get up to Camp Muir. Camp Muir is essentially a plywood box with bunks inside - cozy and smelly. There were some 25 of us piled up inside, including David and I, Rahul, Sumit, Van, Brian, Ivy, Ben. We went to bed at 6:30pm, but no one could sleep. We set out from Camp Muir for the second half of the climb at 2:15am, helmets, head lamps, ice axe at the ready, tied together in groups of 4, including 1 guide per group. It was quite beautiful to see the string of headlamps stretch out in front of us in the darkness; but also daunting because their lights belied the path ahead, and we could see it was going nowhere but up and up. Our first 15-minute break came after 1.5 hrs of climbing. Here we understood why 2-inch thick down parkas with insulated hoods were a required part of our equipment - you cool down really fast sitting on a glacier in the middle of the night. The next segment (Disappointment Cleaver) was brutal - basically 1.5 hrs of going straight up (not winding up with switchbacks, just shooting straight up as 45+ degree angles with big boulders to step over). The guide plowing relentlessly forward, not waiting for anyone (me!) who might need an extra second to climb a part. We ended up having to stop a couple of times so I could catch my breath, but each time he gave me 5-10 seconds, totally not enough. I started feeling nauseous, a side effect of altitude. I needed more fuel to climb on, but couldn't even think of putting something in my mouth. So when we finally reached the next stop, we made the decision that I should return to Camp Muir, along with Sumit and a few others, to wait for the main group's return from the top. The sun came up just as we were beginning this early descent, and the views that opened before us were amazing. We could now see we had been climbing on a sharp ridge, with a snow field on one side and a glacier on the other, sliced up by gaping crevasses with no visible bottom. I had never been on a glacier before so I found these views absolutely astounding. We reached Camp Muir at around 9am, not long after I normally arrive at work - and we had already been climbing up and down a mountain for 6.5 hours.
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