Days before we intended to climb Rainier, the mountain sent an ominous warning. A May 29 rockfall swept through a climbers’ campsite 10,400 feet up Liberty Ridge, crushing two tents, killing one person, injuring two others, and spurring an emergency search and rescue operation. For good measure to spook us, Rainier’s weather then turned volatile, with a forecast for snow, 50 mph winds, and summit temperatures going negative just when we intended to climb the fifth tallest peak in the continental United States.
Rich, Ross, and I held a last-minute meeting at Rich’s apartment in Vancouver, British Columbia, to assess our options.
We felt secure in climbing via the more moderate Disappointment Cleaver-Ingraham Glacier Direct (DC) route on the mountain’s south side, which would be less prone to rock slides and more sheltered from the northerly wind than Liberty Ridge—which also saw six deaths in 2014 from a 3,300-foot fall. But we knew we couldn’t contend with white-out conditions.
We decided to try to race to Rainier before the extreme weather hit. About half of the 10,000 people who attempt Rainier every year reach its summit—about the same success rate as on Everest. The main deciding factor is weather.
Rising 14,411 feet high, Rainier is the most glaciated mountain in the lower 48 and one of the most prominent mountains in the world, owing to it being an isolated volcano. Reaching the summit requires an elevation gain of at least 9,000 feet. For context, the gain from Everest Base Camp in Nepal to the world’s tallest peak is 11,500 feet, and climbers usually ascend over 40 days. We had about 24 hours to climb Rainier.
We drove to Rainier National Park on Sunday, June 2, and camped near Paradise Visitor Center. The following morning we checked into the Paradise Ranger Station, where a ranger warned that two huge crevasses had opened on the Ingraham Glacier Direct route, one of them requiring a 10-foot walk across a metal ladder spanning the crevasse. We registered our itinerary and each grabbed a “blue bag” for carrying our poop down from the mountain.
At about 10 a.m. on June 3, we began hiking up the Muir snowfield toward Camp Muir, an elevation gain of about 5,000 feet. We carried crampons, harnesses, ice axes, and helmets; several ice pickets and ice screws; climbing and belay gear; an 8 mm climbing rope, tent, and shovel; food for 24 hours, plus extra; a cooking stove to boil water; and warm layers for the following day’s summit bid. We lathered ourselves in sunscreen and later wished that we’d each applied more.
The dream to climb Rainier was sparked several years earlier, when my mother gave me an old framed photo of the mountain as a holiday gift. Rainier looked awesome, huge glaciers adorning all its sides. Seeing the picture almost daily, the mountain seemed to taunt me: Could I climb it? The question inched closer to reality in 2017 when Rich moved to Vancouver and himself climbed the mountain via the Emmons-Winthrop Glacier Route. When he invited me to his May 2019 wedding, we began discussing potential side trips.
“We could climb Rainier while you’re out here,” he said. “But do you know crevasse rescue or glacier travel?”
“No,” I said. “But you do, right?”
“Yeah, but you’re the one who has to rescue me if I fall into a crevasse.”
Nobody tries to fall into a crevasse, of course. It usually happens when what appears to be solid snow reveals itself to be a thin snowbridge across a crevasse. Bruce Barcott, author of the Rainier classic The Measure of a Mountain, sums up the high stakes of glacier travel on Rainier this way:
If you’re alone when you pop through a snowbridge, you stand a good chance of staying in the ice for ten to ten thousand years. If you’re roped in, you hope your buddies plant their ice axes and hold on, stopping your fall and preventing your pulling them in like beads on a string. Recently two climbers standing next to a crevasse on the Ingraham Glacier were blown in by a sixty-mile-per-hour gust of wind. And that was in summer.
By chance, I knew a ranger named Cameron who worked on Mount Rainer—I’d met him a year earlier in Yosemite National Park, when we were both climbing Half Dome. So I sent Cameron an email asking for advice to a newcomer to Rainer. He responded:
Crevasse falls are not all that common on the DC, but can happen. Your team should be able to self rescue so it would be good if you spend some time taking a class on rope travel and crevasse rescue, or just working through it with some experienced friends ahead of time.
Living in New York City, I lacked any nearby glaciers to practice on. But I did have access to one of the country’s more extreme alpine environments on Mount Washington in New Hampshire. About a month before Rich’s wedding, I jumped into a two-day course through International Mountain Equipment in North Conway. The price tag was steep at $450, but it beat the $1200-plus cost of going up Rainier with a guided group.
Now rising up the snowfields toward Camp Muir, I was quickly sweating despite wearing shorts and being surrounded by deep snow. (This area of the mountain got 61.5 feet of snow last year.) As we gained elevation, to the south we could see the volcanic peaks of Mount Adams (elevation 12,280 feet), Mount Hood (elevation 11,250 feet), and Mount St. Helens (elevation 8,363 feet) with its missing north side from the 1980 eruption.
But something notable was missing: Ross. Our third team member was falling behind from fatigue and dizziness due to the heat and elevation gain. Two slow-moving groups guided by Rainier Mountaineering, Inc (RMI) passed us. “I’m a little worried about Ross,” said Rich. I nodded.
After 4.5 miles, at about 3 p.m. we reached Camp Muir (est. 1912), the highest point that people are allowed on Rainier without a climbing permit. Located in a rocky patch below Gibraltar Rock, Muir was bustling with several dozen hikers, climbers, rangers, and guides. There were three huts: one for the rangers, one exclusive for RMI groups, and one public bunkhouse. Because it was a weekday, the stone-walled bunkhouse was mostly empty, allowing us to avoid tent camping on the windy glacier.
I walked up to the ranger station and asked if Cameron was working. A ranger named Ryan said that Cameron had descended the previous day for a couple of rest days. Ryan also broke the news that the Ingraham Glacier Direct route was closed because one of the crevasses had eaten the ladder bridge. All climbing parties were being rerouted up the slightly longer Disappointment Cleaver route to circumvent the crevasses.
“The guides punched in the new route Sunday,” Ryan said. By “punched in,” he meant that they’d marked the route with wired wands for direction-finding.
Ross appeared anxious when I said that I was interested in hiking 30 minutes further that afternoon to Cathedral Gap, which would give us a view up Ingraham Flats, where in 1981 11 climbers were killed by an avalanche—the deadliest accident in Rainier history. I wanted to see what the area looked like before we tried to navigate it under the darkness of night. We huddled outside the bunkhouse for a meeting.
“I don’t have the energy to go any further today,” Ross said. He added that he wasn’t confident he’d be able to keep pace with us the next day on our summit attempt. “I know this mountain means a lot to you, Stephen, and you’ve come from across the country to climb it. Will you be angry if we need to turn back tomorrow?”
There was a tense pause, and then I tried to make a joke. “I won’t punch you in the face,” I said to Ross. “But, yeah, I’ll be disappointed.” I added, “But I think you can do it, Ross.”
“I won’t be going as fast as you guys,” he said. “Are you OK with going slower?”
“Yes,” I said. “But it’ll be windy and cold tomorrow, so we’ll need to keep moving to stay warm.”
“Tomorrow will be harder than today was,” Rich said.
“What if you and Rich did a two-man team without me?” Ross suggested.
Now Rich looked apprehensive. In glacier rescue, strength comes in numbers, because more people can brace any one person’s fall. “We’d have to talk about what a two-person roped team means,” Rich said.
“There is another option,” I said. “We three could start together. And if you need to turn back, then Rich and I could potentially return to Camp Muir with you and then continue as a two-person team.”
“Let’s see how we all feel after dinner,” Rich said.
We dropped our bags in the bunkhouse, where four people were already asleep (one of them hooked up to what appeared to be an oxygen tank, which seemed a bit excessive). We unpacked our sleeping pads and bags, then began boiling water for our instant meal packets. We were aiming to all be asleep by 7 p.m. to get several hours sleep before a super-early alpine start of midnight, which we figured would allow us to reach the summit by sunrise. (It’s safer to travel before the sun melts the snow and causes avalanches, crevasses, and falling seracs and rocks.)
At about 6 p.m., the head ranger called all the independent climbing groups together for a debriefing by the ranger hut. There were about a dozen of us, divided between three parties. We stood in a circle in the snow. The ranger looked sternly at us all.
“I need to make this quick because we have a potential SAR underway on Liberty Ridge,” he said. “I can’t talk about that though.” Earlier in the afternoon, we’d spotted a helicopter speeding toward Camp Muir—we now realized that it was conducting aerial reconnaissance for these newly stranded climbers, who were trapped not far from where the others had recently been struck by rockfall. According to a later press release from the park service, the park chopper “found four climbers at the 13,500’ level signaling for help. Unfortunately, gusts to 30 mph made rescue impossible using short-haul techniques. A backup plan to drop equipment to the climbers was thwarted by the same conditions.”
The ranger asked when we expected to depart for the summit: one group said 11 p.m., my group said midnight, and a third group said 1 a.m. The ranger said to expect winds averaging 45 mph, with gusts above 50 mph. Temps would be in the low 20s F.
“These conditions are about when we start turning people down from the mountain,” the ranger said. “So be honest with yourselves tomorrow. Speak up when you feel the need to turn back. It might not be a summit day.”
We were all in our sleeping bags by 8 p.m.
My alarm sounded at 11 p.m. Soon the whole bunkhouse was rustling as we each laced up our boots, secured our gaiters, and headed outside to strap on our crampons and rope up. It was a moonless night, which seemed to make the stars and planets overhead especially bright. I could already see the headlamps of four people marching across the Cowlitz Glacier, beginning their five-hour journey to the summit. Soon we were following. Rich led, with Ross in the middle and me at the rear.
After about 15 minutes, I heard Ross yell something to Rich. They both turned to me.
“My legs just aren’t feeling up for this,” Ross said. “I need to turn back.”
We turned back toward Camp Muir, now with me in the lead and Rich in the rear. Ross untied from the rope and wished us luck. I felt badly seeing him quit, but it was better (and safer) for it to happen sooner than later when the climbing became challenging.
It was about 12:45 a.m. As Rich and I adjusted our rope length, a train of RMI-led climbers passed us. Another group followed close behind them. So as not to get stuck behind both groups, we jumped between them. With Rich in the lead and me following about 15 feet behind, we soon passed the first RMI group and within the hour passed another four-person group going up Cathedral Gap.
We sped across the crevasse-prone Ingraham Flats toward Disappointment Cleaver, where I led. Looking westward, I could see the bright lights of Seattle about 60 miles away. On the mountain it was still pitch black, which made our journey both more ominous but also less real, as if nothing had existed but the small world in front of my headlamp.
At about 3:30 a.m., we reached the top of the cleaver and passed another four-person group. We stopped for a water break and to layer up; I put on a balaclava. Rich took the lead as we crossed around more crevasses and beneath menacing seracs. It was here that a five-story tower of ice collapsed a year earlier, littering the route with head-high ice blocks. We moved quickly, aided by how the RMI guides days earlier shoveled a foot-wide pathway into the side of the mountain. The man-made pathway detracted a bit from the “wilderness” experience, but I wasn’t complaining.
The slope became extremely steep, rising through a series a switchbacks. We clipped into fixed snow anchors previously set by RMI guides for protection. Soon we caught up to the very first party on the mountain. The first rays of sunlight were appearing on the horizon, casting an orange streak across the sky and lighting up the snow.
We came to a resting area known as High Break, where the terrain became less steep. I appreciated the chance to sit, but it was too cold to feel restful. My face burned from the wind chill and I was developing a strong headache, likely from the combination of no sleep and high altitude.
After a five-minute break, we began the final push toward the summit, now with nobody in front of us. I led. The wind picked up, occasionally pushing me off balance. A half-hour later, at about 5:30 a.m., I was the first person on June 4 to stand atop the summit’s crater rim.
We descended into the summit crater, which last erupted in 1895, and walked across its 1,000-foot-diameter to Columbia Crest, where a summit logbook was tucked below a rock outcropping. We each signed our names.
Puffs of steam and smoke bubbled up from the ground all around us, and the snow here was completely melted because of these volcanic fumaroles burping hydrogen sulfide. We sat in the dirt. It felt a bit surreal to finally be atop the mountain whose portrait I’d stared at for years.
I was shivering. Our water bottles were mostly frozen, and any still-liquid water was unbearably cold to drink. After a five-minute rest, we began retracing our steps back down to Camp Muir in the daylight.
It was strange to now see where we’d climbed in darkness. Huge seracs loomed overhead, yawning crevasses spread below us, and steep drops led down the snow and ice fields that we had traversed.
As the sun softened the snow, a growing trickle of pebbles and rocks loosened from the mountainside, occasionally knocking into us. I was quickly sweating and overheating from the heat of the sun and snow glare, shedding layers to prevent from becoming too dizzy or dehydrated amid a worsening headache and fatigue.
We were back at Camp Muir before 9 a.m. We’d returned from the summit in half the time it took us to get there. Ross was waiting for us outside.
“I was about to hike down when I looked out and saw two climbers appear over Cathedral Gap,” Ross said. “I figured it had to be you.” He snapped a photo of us.
Within the hour we three were speeding down the mountain toward Paradise, covering the 4.5-mile trail in about two hours. On the steeper sections, we were able to glissade (i.e. slide on our butts) for up to a quarter-mile over the snowfield. Each of us gained a bit of airtime as we careened down the ice and snow, suffering a few bruises along the way. (My tailbone was sore for a week afterward.)
Back in Paradise, I looked back up toward the windy summit, where clouds were assembling ahead of the forecasted snowstorm. Somewhere up there, four climbers were still stranded on Liberty Ridge, which was turning into a national news story. (The Today Show and CBS News each ran spots on the incident.) Two of the stranded climbers were from New York City, and I wondered if any family or friends might see the news and be concerned about me.
A day later, the climbers were still stranded on Rainier. High winds had blown away their tent and climbing equipment, as well as prevented any rescue attempts by air or ground. I assumed the men would freeze to death.
On Thursday, during what a press release called a “brief window of good weather,” a park helicopter swooped up to the summit, spotted the four climbers huddled in a col below the crater rim, and plucked them off the mountain. “Don’t mess with Rainier,” one of the climbers later told the Seattle Times from the hospital where he was recovering.
I emailed the Cameron to say that I’d safely made it to the summit and hoped that life on the mountain had since calmed down for he and the other rangers. I added that next time I visited, I’d be bringing skies for the descent. He responded:
Rainier definitely has its own special challenges. Glad your trip was a safe one. Skis are always a bonus on the down:-)
