I never thought I would climb a mountain. There aren't a whole lot of mountains in Illinois to climb. I grew up in the highest town in Illinois, near the highest point, Charles Mound. The elevation of Charles Mound is 1,235 feet. Not a huge climbing feat by any means.Adrian kept asking me if I wanted to climb Mt. Rainier this summer. Climbing Mt. Rainier seemed like a good idea. Doing it this summer did not. I ended up talking about doing it to my friend, Josh, who goes to my church. He suggested that we try something easier first, like Mt. Shasta in California. This sounded like a great plan. A few days later, he asked if we would like to climb Mt. Adams with him. This sounded like an even better plan.
Now the only thing I really knew about climbing a mountain, I probably learned from movies. Given my terrible movie memory, this wasn't real promising. Lucky for us, Josh was willing to help. He gave us a list of supplies (non of which I seemed to have) and let us borrow backpacks and a tent.
So how does one even begin to get ready to climb a mountain? Adrian and I decided to torture ourselves running stairs. It was pretty painful. Last Sunday (after an amazing lunch, planned by my amazing boyfriend), we went to REI to attempt to get all the stuff on Josh's list. Lucky for our wallets, you can rent a lot of the stuff you need at REI. We hooked ourselves up with rental sleeping bags, sleeping pads, ice axe, climbing boots, and crampons. Unlucky for my wallet, I didn't even have an appropriate coat.
Mt. Adams is 12,285 feet above sea level. The climb itself is about 7,000 feet, over less than 6 miles. That's a whole lot of going up. Essentially pure torture on the body until you stop going up. Then you get to torture yourself because your body already hurts and you have to go back down. Sounds like fun, doesn't it?
Adrian and I met Josh and Sterling at Josh's place and piled our gear into Josh's blue WRX. Josh and Adrian have pretty much the exact same car, same year and everything. We left Seattle at about 1 pm or so to drive down to Mt Adams. Since some of the roads are washed out, we had to drive all the way down to Portland and back up. Unfortunately we hit tons of traffic and arrived much later than we wanted to. We had hoped to get there early enough to start the accent on Friday so that we had less elevation change Saturday. We got our volcano passes, which allow us to climb the mountain, and went to set up camp. The only good thing about not being able to climb Friday was that we wouldn't have to carry a big part of our gear. Our tents and sleeping bags could stay at the bottom.
We woke up around six to get ready to climb. Ate some food, packed our bags and got on the trail by 7:05. By 7:10 I was ready to turn around. The mountaineering boots were totally hard to walk in. Eventually, we hit parts of the trail that were sandy and rocky and I appreciated the boots, but it remained a love/hate relationship the entire day.
Eventually we got high enough that we could see Mt. Hood to the south, across the Columbia River in Oregon. The view was starting to make the climb worth it. Soon we could see Mt. St. Helens to the east. The views were particularly interesting because clouds had formed over the mountains and valleys in the distance.
Josh, the only one on the trip with any significant experience, told us he needed to stop and attend to his blisters. A few weeks before he had attempted to summit Mt. Rainier and his feet had not recovered. In order to not lose too much time, we left him behind. We made it a bit further and stopped to rest to let him catch up. We heard from a guy who summited the night before that a storm was supposed to come in around 4:30 that day. Josh caught up and we tried to take care of his blisters but they were quite large. Before we left our resting spot, we heard from a big group coming down that they had decided not to summit because of strong winds higher up. We determined that by 2:00 pm we would turn around if we had not summited.
Not far after that, I reached a milestone I had been looking forward to. Being above the tree line. I sort of expected the tree line to be a lot more drastic (looking, oh, I don't know, like a "line") but the vegetation takes its time tapering off. Trees start to look wimpier and wimpier, then you only see bushes, and later only small wildflowers, and finally only occasional moss.
Eventually Josh couldn't go any further, so Sterling, Adrian and I had to continue without him. Soon we started seeing tents. We had reached the first areas where people set up base camp to do the climb in two days. At this point the wind really picked up, making an already exhausting climb even more tiring. Trying to step up, balance on sharp rocks that could shift at any moment, while being blown by 40 mph winds, while your muscles are exhausted... doesn't this sound like fun? Oh yeah, then do it again and again until you finally get to take another break. Torture.
A few hours into the climb we reach our first patch of snow. Walking on the snow is a great break from the sharp rocks. Unfortunately, the patch is small. Soon after we reach the first glacier. (I think it was a glacier, but really I don't know.) It was time for me to use my crampons. Crampons are these metal teeth things you put on your boots to give you traction in the snow. Basically I felt like I was attaching a bear trap to my shoe. Adrian taught me to "self arrest." I actually couldn't even imagine what that meant until they told me. Basically, all it is is using your ice axe to dig in the snow to give you traction in case you slide down the slope. It seemed pretty easy until I just read about how to do it on wikipedia 10 minutes ago. Now I think someone needs to teach me for real before I go climb again.Walking in the snow was a good break, but since Sterling did not have crampons and Adrian had not put his on yet, we switched back to the sharp rocks when we had the opportunity. If we ever climb again, everyone is bringing crampons and the ice axe and we'll climb when more of the mountain is covered in snow. Snow climbing is much easier and safer than the rocks.
At this point I announce the the party that my motivation is fading fast. It was becoming clear that we would not summit that day. Even making the false peak (Piker's Peak, elevation 11,657 ft) seems out of reach. Our GPS devise told us we were somewhere around 9,600 ft (if I remember right). We decided that, indeed, we would not summit, instead we would attempt to reach 10,000 feet.
A few hundred feet later we ran out of rocks for Sterling to climb on. He determined that he was done and would likely turn back as we climbed further on. My body was pretty much screaming at me to stop at this point, but Adrian encouraged me to make it to at least 9,800 feet. Of course, when we got to that point he convinced me another 200 feet would be well worth it. I agreed, and my body grudgingly complied. At this point the only way I kept going on was to count my steps. 20 steps, take a break, 20 steps, take a break. Occasionally, I'd get a burst of energy and make it to 40. All the while Adrian's checking his GPS to see our elevation.
At about 9,930 feet we ran out of snow. Taking off the crampons seemed liked too much effort, if we sat down, we may not have continued on. Given that they were rentals, we tested them out on the rocks. It was sort of an extreme version of wearing track spikes on metal bleachers. Luckily the rocky patch was short and we were back on snow.
Finally, Adrian stopped and announced he was above 10,000 feet. Finally, the end in sight, I make the last steps to catch up to him and plop down on some snow. We took a few pictures and reveled in the fact that had made our goal. Not making the summit was a big disappointment, but hitting 10,000 feet was something to be proud of and definitely something that sounds impressive. Our next move was the dumbest of the entire trip. Those rocks we had just passed, still there. The crampons on our feet, still there. The combination: absolutely ignorant. About halfway down the rocks, I step on myself and fall flat on my face. Now falling flat on my face is something I've done before. Falling flat on your face on that steep of a slope, an entirely different experience all together. Totally embarrassed, I refused to turn around to look at Adrian, much less the family of four sitting right above us. Adrian attempted to rush towards me to see if I was ok, and subsequently fell flat on HIS face. I turned around just in time to catch it. I must say, that was very good for my ego. We had a good laugh at how dumb we were and decided to never do that again. We stopped to take of the crampons and I put my pant legs on to cover my newly cut up knees.
The best part of climbing (besides reaching the goal) is descending on snow. There are lots of options. Some people carry up skis, or snow boards, some sled down in garbage bags (or so I've read), many just slide down on their heels or on their bums. The technical term for this slide is "glissading." Glissading is just as fun as it sounds, and takes much less energy than actually climbing down. Adrian and I used a combination of the bum glissade and the standing glissade.
This blog is getting long. I guess it takes awhile to climb a mountain.
After the snow, the way down hurt in entirely different ways. Pretty much every step hurt because of the stiff boots unless you manage to land with your leg totally vertical, which happened about 1 out of 10 steps. Once we got off snow, we changed into our hiking shoes and life was a lot better. The rest of the way down was pretty uneventful. We paused to talk to pretty much everyone we passed. I normally dislike small talk, but something about trail small talk is really wonderful to me. Maybe I just enjoy the time catching my breath and relaxing my muscles, but I think it's something more.
Not much else to say about climbing the mountain. We're going to do it again next summer, give ourselves more time and make it. Adrian asked if I wanted to try again this year. I told him I needed to forget how much it hurt first. I think pretty much all I wrote about how much it hurt and how bad it was, but I loved it. I don't have the desire to go do this all the time or climb Mt. Everest or anything, but it was an amazing experience.
