Part One: deciding to climb Mt. Rainier

I aspire to be a big outdoorsy kind of person. I remember going backpacking in the Cascades when I was in my very early teens, and even younger, with my dad and older siblings. Since then I've really only gone on a few hikes here and there, just locally and some fun desert hikes in southern Utah while I was out there for college.

At the beginning of this summer I kind of had it in my mind that I would make an effort to be outside more, do a backpacking trip or two, or at least sleep outside on my back deck every week (so far I've only slept on my back deck once, and I haven't done a backpacking trip through the woods yet, and it's August 30th). So with that kind of attitude I decided that I would say yes to whomever invited me to do something in the great outdoors, no matter what that meant. 

So I climbed Mt. Rainier. With this guy. And a few others. 

Here's the thing, though: I had no idea what I was getting myself into. Well, obviously. But when my good friend, Matt (from the photo above, obviously), asked me if I wanted to climb Mt. Rainier with him and some other friends, of course I said yes! We were sitting on his couch lounging around. I figured he just meant a backpacking trip around in the woods, on dirt, with little animals, and maybe some fishing. Also, it's really easy to be motivated to say yes to any sort of hiking/climbing trip when you're comfortably lodged on a couch late at night.

By the way, I should probably mention that he invited me a solid three weeks before we were to climb. Remember how I said I hadn't really gone backpacking in years? As it turns out, it would have been a really good idea to have done some sort of prep for a climb like that. 

I sat on the fence about climbing the mountain until we got to the ice steps on Summit Day. So naturally the couple of weeks leading up to the event had my insides twisted up in conflict. I could hardly sleep the couple of days before the ascent, and eating made me nauseous. But I tried to prep for the thing quickly, even if I decided to ditch the guys the day before.

So two weeks before we took half our team and hiked up to Camp Muir, which was the base camp we camped at. I had never hiked up a snowfield before, and we had 3,000 vertical feet to climb before we made it to the camp. I probably should have worn a heavy pack, but naturally I didn't think about it and wore a light day pack. At the top we ate and napped, and, even though I was tired and ready to go home, we hopped over the saddle on the mountain, where the camp sat, and onto the glacier directly behind to practice our crevasse rescuing. 

 

Crevasse. That word now mostly scares the crap out of me. Just.... shudder. Those things are wicked, deep, and almost entirely unforgiving. Just for your information, some of these glaciers on Mt. Rainier are 700ft deep and they get some nasty deep cracks in them. And things fall in them. Like water bottles. And people. So when you're up on a mountain that's covered in these crevasses, you are roped to the other guys on your team (I say guys because I was the only woman on our team) and you have an ice ax, and other things connected to your being in case someone falls into one while passing over, or if they slip down the steep slope and slide gracefully over the edge, or whatever. The point of the equipment is to help slow down that process, or to stop it entirely. You know, unless your team goes down with you. 

So, having said that, up at Muir that day we decided the best way to practice saving someone from a crevasse (from, like it's a scary monster that's out to get you) is to lower each other into a crevasse and then do said rescuing. The guys LOVED this. And me? Well, let's just say I realized that day that I actually have a deep fear of depths. I knew water was a problematic area, but I had no idea glaciers were so scary. You don't have to be too deep in one of those before nobody can hear a word you say. And they're not going to try to hard to look over that edge in case it collapses below them. So I went about 20ft down and landed on a ledge right next to a black hole of what felt like certain death. I had no idea if my line had any tension in it, or if, if the ledge I was standing on gave way, I would go plunging into the hole 20 more ft before using up all my rope. 

Luckily for me, I actually have a side of me that tries to take over when my adrenaline is pumping and I'm ready to claw my way up the side of a crevasse, so I pulled out the camera and took a picture of myself AND that dark hole of death (dang straight I'd take a picture of impending doom!). As it turns out, that crevasse was actually incredible. It was deep and things were dripping, and it was so quiet. I was literally inside a glacier staring at ice that went from white at the top, to blue, to dark blue.... the ice formations below me were intricate and stunning. The whole thing was absolutely breathtaking. 

This whole adventure of climbing Mt. Rainier put me on edge (no pun intended), made me feel unsafe, and completely got me out of my comfort zone. And yet, every single thing that scared me so much was at the same time absolutely incredible to me. My body and mind were at battle, just trying to figure out how the best way to cope was. The night we got back from Camp Muir that first weekend, after the crevasse training and sunburns, I was sick just thinking about what going up Rainier would really be like. But two days later, I was ready do go for it. I had seen things I had never before seen, and I was moved. 

And that's when I started getting excited for the climb. 

Part two coming soon.

(photos taken on my phone)