My 6th attempt at Mt Rainier was ultimately not successful, but it was one of the most enjoyable times I’ve had on the mountain - it really proved to us on this trip that this moutain is not for the faint of heart.
2016-06-16
The trip involved a whole crew of folks - including my wife and I, my cousin Sean and his wife, and my brother. Everyone flew in on a Thursday and we headed up to camp on Friday, heading up the Edmonds-Winthrop route again. The first part of the climb was pretty standard - sunny morning and we made quick progress up to the point where we rope up and drop down onto the glacier. We had done a few training hikes, which was good - everyone was strong and in good spirits.
About halfway up the approach, we ran across a pretty big black bear. He ran off down the trail and I got a picture as he ran.
In the early afternoon, we got to the rope-up point and got all our gear together. As we were roping up, the weather looked amazing but it took a turn just an hour later - with big white flecks coming down on us.
About 2 hours after that, we were in a whiteout and the snow was becoming increasingly hard to travel through - we were punching through every other step and wasting a ton of energy getting through the powder. The last half mile or so into camp was tough - Mark was in the lead and he was getting smoked as we finally got up on camp. The cravasses were preatty open, surprising with how early it was in the year, so we had to make a pretty big detour before we were finally able to circle in and get to camp. We quickly setup camp, as the snow started to come in harder and harder. '
It pretty much snowed all night - with probably 4 feet of accumulation in the morning. We had one 4 man tent - Mark had brought a bivy but the conditions were not good for the bivy, so we let him sleep on our feet. Most of our camp pictures were taken the next day.
2016-06-17
We took a look up at the summit approach the next morning and it was pretty obvious this wasn’t happening. We considered for a moment hanging around til the next day to see if the sun would harden things, but we had flurries comming in in the afternoon and decided to head on down. We watched one team make an attempt, but they barely made it to the start of the Emmons climb. The ranger told us it would probably be 2-3 days for things to settle before it was worth making an attempt - and then did a nod towards the team that made the morning attempt…
We made the tough decision to head on down. Everytime I have a failed attempt I just remember that if it was easy, I wouldn’t be doing it. That usually keeps me motivated for the next attempt. :)
Back out of the snow, on our way home. Tired, a bit dissapointed, but happy we had an adventure.
