First impressions about this mountain climbing thing

I arrived in Ashford WA last Friday, where most of the big names in mountaineering climbing have their headquarters. I have signed up with RMI Expeditions who was founded in 1969 by the twins Whittaker, Lou and Jim. Jim became the first American climber to summit Mt Everest in 1963. This year will be their 49th year running climbing seminar up to Mount Rainier. Most of the best American climbers in history have worked or still work at RMI as guides. So I knew that I would be in good company during this adventure and I would learn a lot from all the guides.
 
The next morning, I drove up to Paradise, our “launch site” for the climb. At the entrance of the National Park, there was no snow at all but as I approached Paradise, it started snowing heavily at times and there were big snow banks on each side of the road.  Finally, the weather cleared and I arrived at the visitor center parking lot with literally walls of snow left and right. I couldn’t believe it but the mountains were so beautiful. I tried to see Rainier but it was a little cloudy. I started to climb up a little bit just to get my legs back and also to test my mountain boots. And after about 30’, I finally could see the top of Mount Rainier. Wow! It’s a massive mountain and completely covered with snow and ice from bottom to top. It will definitely be a full climbing experience.

In the afternoon, I picked up all my rentals gear for the climb, and we had our orientation. Eighteen clients, mostly neophytes, have signed up for this 1st climb of the season, separated in 2 groups. As you can expect, we all come from different horizons and background but all the members seem to be fit and well prepared for the climb. You don’t improvise this kind of adventure. Our leading guide is Brent Okita, who has 516 summits of Rainier and the guide for my group is Solveig Waterfall who has 120 summits of Rainier. So they have accumulated a tremendous amount of expertise on this mountain and they are not shy of sharing it with us.
 
Today was our first real day on the mountain, learning all the basic mountaineering safety and techniques that will help us get to the top. We put crampons on and went up and down the mountain, using different footing techniques depending on the steepness of the slope. We learned how to self arrest with an ice ax, whether solo or on a rope team. We also travelled up and down the mountain as a rope team. There are a lot of small details that you need to remember and obviously we don’t have yet the muscle memory or the experience to safely climb on our own. But that was a very good approach to what we will expect come the real climb.
 
Monday will be the real start of the climb. We will drive up to Paradise from Ashford around 8:15am and will begin the climb up to Camp Muir at 10,080 feet around 9:30am. The plan is to get there around 4pm. It is a 4,700 feet elevation but it will not require putting crampons on or using ice ax. The weather is supposed to be like today, very sunny and not too cold. Upon our arrival at Camp Muir, we rest, rehydrate and put some calories in immediately.  Then we have a summit day meeting. Originally, the 5 days program has a rest day in-between going up to Camp Muir and the summit day, in order to rest and relax before the summit bid. However, Tuesday will be again sunny with a perfect weather, whereas Wednesday might get cloudy and the weather will start to deteriorate for the rest of the week. Because of that, there is a good chance that Tuesday will be indeed our summit day. We’d wake up around midnight, put crampons on and several layers of clothes to  get ready to start climbing around 1am, then hopefully tag the summit around 7-8am and finally climb back down to Camp Muir. There, we’d stay for the rest of the day chilling and then we'd climb back down to Paradise on Wednesday morning. That is what most clients, myself included, want to do, but ultimately Brent and Solveig will decide our summit day Monday evening after checking one last time the weather forecast and the fitness of our team after our climb up to Muir.
 
If you want to follow my/our progress, please go to the Live Tracking page and see if/when my little dot is moving. You will know exactly where we are on the mountain and when we are going for the summit.
 
It’s about to start….