Mountain gets what mountain wants

Shawn and I recently went on our summit attempt of Mount Rainier. It didn't go as smoothly as we hoped it would.

RMI (our guide service) does their typical rainier summit in 3 days. The first day is called "Snow School", the second is the hike up to the Muir base camp, and the third is the summit attempt.

Our snow school day started with good weather, Shawn and I made it to the RMI shop at 7am sharp, and after renting the gear we didn't already own (crampons, plastic boots, snow goggles - see all suggested gear here) it was off to Paradise to start our hike.

Along with us were another 7 climbers. We hiked up to the snow fields to start training. We started with the basics of using an ice axe, moved on to crampon use, and then over to rope-team dynamics, and simulated falls. It was a fairly relaxed day compared to the next two.

Here's a picture of a few of the climbers hanging out during a short break between lessons:

You'll notice a fuzz ball in this shot. My friend Li who sponsored me on this trip asked me to bring it to the top. I believe it's a tribble.

The tribble and I got along quite well over the trip:

 

The second day was our hike to Muir. Again, the weather was looking reasonable for the trip, but as the day went on it degraded.

We arrived at Muir ahead of schedule, and went to bed on time at 6pm for our inevitable wake-up call which was to be at 11:30pm (yes, PM)...

The picture below is our camp which is absolute luxury compared to having to sleep in a tent during blizzard conditions...

 

11:30pm comes early, and I don't think I slept a wink that "night". We started our hike at 12:30am Sunday morning in what was for sure the worst August weather I have been in.

We climbed up to 11,300ft at our first rest stop in 35mph winds, no visibility, and a ton of snow, which made it hard to stand still let alone climb.

At this point the guides got together to discuss the situation. Two minutes later they came back with the bad news - we had to abandon our summit attempt, and head back to base camp.

This was at about 2am, and by the time we got back to where we had started it was 4am. We were cold, tired, bummed out, and not looking forward to waking up 2 or 3 hours later to hike down to the base, and then have to tell everyone we didn't make it to the top.

But we did, and went down to the RMI camp to have burgers, and talk about the plans for coming back to do another climb sometime soon. Unfortunately you only get one chance per RMI climb, so we have to pay our way for the next climb which is not cheap. There is a chance Shawn and I can get on a climb this weekend if all goes well.

We hope the weather, and conditions co-operate because at the end of the day the mountain gets what the mountain wants.