Day 1 – The day has finally arrived! After flying to Seattle on Friday and participating in a mandatory gear check on Sunday, we arrive at the Alpine Ascents office at 5:00am to depart to the White River Campground/Trailhead, elevation 4350 ft. We make final arrangements and then begin the hike up the Glacier Basin Trail around 10:00am. The weather is slightly cool and cloudy which makes it nice carrying a 50# pack! After the 3.1 mile hike to Glacier Basin we begin to travel across the valley to the Inter Glacier. The ropes, harnesses, crampons and ice axes come out at this point in order to make it up the glacier to our first camp. We set up camp, cook dinner and then watch some interesting clouds form across St. Elmo’s Pass.

Day 2 – Day 2 begins as we break camp and travel a short ways up to the top of the Inter Glacier. At this point we shed our glacier travel equipment and move up the ridge past Camp Curtis to Camp Shurman at an elevation of 9500 ft. We set up camp after taking a lunch break, review knots and rope management techniques, have dinner and then go to bed early in order to leave for the summit at 12:00am.

Day 3 – Summit Day is finally here! We all get up at 10:30pm in order to be ready to leave Camp Shurman at midnight. After we are all suited up and roped in to teams of four the journey up the Emmons Glacier begins. Due to all the late season crevasses, what would be a fairly straightforward route up the mountain is actually a long, zigzagging traverse. There are initially a lot of “trenches” in the snow that we follow. These pathways have melted and frozen many times and were hard for me, with my short legs, to negotiate. .. HAHA! Luckily that didn’t last too long! We end up crossing many snow bridges and crevasses with only the assistance of our headlamps. It is probably better that way so we don’t see how bad they really are in daylight! During the journey up we are treated to the Northern Lights and an incredible sunrise. After many short breaks for water, food and warmth, we make it to the summit of Mt. Rainier at 14411 ft. after 10 1/2 hours of climbing. I didn’t do a very good job keeping my digital camera warm and consequently it froze up. Attached is the one summit photo that Todd was able to shoot for us. There were several other cameras that did work up there and hopefully we can share different perspectives. We take a few minutes to fuel up again and then begin our descent. We make it back to Camp Shurman in less than 4 hours! Dinner is quickly served and I fall asleep almost immediately!

Day 4 – We get up at 6:30 for breakfast and then break camp to get on the trail by 8:30. After a short scramble up Steamboat Prow we take the ridgeline all the way to Mt. Ruth. The park rangers recommended that we do not take the Inter Glacier route down as the going is pretty slick – mostly ice and difficult to negotiate going down. So we continue down the ridge into Glacier Basin and finally reach trees and vegetation! It has been a beautiful 4 days and we really lucked out on the weather. Everyone is in good spirits as we hike the final 3.1 miles down to the campground and our vans. We stop in Enumclaw for a Mexican dinner and it is back to civilization and the wonderful Seattle traffic! Thanks to our  Alpine Ascents International guides Eric, Todd and Winslow for a very memorable trip and one more notch in my training belt for Aconcagua in January.

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