Rainier Climb Recap

Well... we made it safely to the summit and back! We had absolutely perfect weather (especially by Washington standards) and our guides from Alpine Ascents International (AAI) did a superb job getting us up and down the mountain. Cody put together an excellent play-by-play of the climb, which can be found here. I look forward to the next climb and learning more technical skills (e.g., route-finding, crevasse rescue, evaluating snow-pack). I thought I'd provide a few of my observations and lessons learned from the whole experience. Hope these are of use to future climbers. Keep in mind that the following are simply my conclusions/opinions based on my own limited experience; get out there, experiment, and find what works best for you. Good luck!

Training:

     Physical.

     (Profile: age 28, 150 lbs, 5'9", asthma)

     The two primary concerns I had while preparing for the climb were that my asthma would make me more susceptible to acute mountain sickness (AMS) and that my hiking in the upper midwest (MN) would not be adequate for Rainier. My training regimen is summarized here and was based on information from guide companies, Mountaineering: The Freedom of the Hills and Training for Climbing. Basically, I spent an equal amount of time working on cardio (mostly aerobic) and hiking, with little core strength training, and no flexibility training. How did I fare? Much better than expected. Asthma was not a problem. Aside from a slight headache and nausea at Camp Muir (which went away after taking ibuprofen, eating, changing my socks, and resting a bit), I wasn't affected by AMS. Key factors are likely that I stayed well hydrated (0.5 L per 1-2 hr, while moving, 1-2 L at camp each evening), we spent two nights above 10,000' and I breathed deeply while moving and while at rest. My hiking training was more than adequate for the conditions. I had worked my way up to hiking with 50 lbs for 4 hrs with a 2-3000' gain in elevation a few weeks before the climb. I made one last training hike in WA (Heather Lake, 1.5x, thus 7 mi, 1650' gain) with 60 lbs a few days before the climb and gave myself two days recovery. When we set out from Paradise, our packs weighed ~40-45 lbs and we moved at ~1000' vertical feet per hour. This was much less strenuous than I had trained for. As result, I did not feel muscle fatigue (legs, shoulders, or back) at any point during the ascent. This let me focus on my feet and the rope as we made our way up the mountain.

Hiking in skunk cabbage at Heather Lake, it's one of those things only a true Washingtonian would appreciate

The only painful part of the trip for myself was late in the day during our descent. My knees were very sore by the time we got to Pebble creek and as soon as we left the snow and hit the dirt trail, the plastic mountaineering boots really hurt my feet. No blisters though as I had duct-taped my Achilles tendon and heel earlier that day. Really not a big deal though considering the mileage and elevation change for the day (9 mi total, gain 3000' to summit then lose 9000').

     Mental.

     I'd recommend reading the chapter in Training for Climbing on mental training. Discusses the importance of maintaining your focus while climbing and suggests mental exercises to help get you into your "zone." Also agree with the statement in Training that "the 'no fear' attitude is for buffoons." Climbing is dangerous and you should be on alert for hazards and how to avoid or react to them.

Gear:

         I followed general guidelines for mountaineering gear from AAI, RMI, and Mountaineering: The Freedom of the Hills. Overall, I was happy with the gear I used. The gear lists provided by the guide services gave me an idea of what I was looking for and specific products to start with. With that info in mind, I shopped around at both REI (Bloomington, MN) and Midwest Mountaineering (Minneapolis). I  spent hours trying on different items, constantly comparing and thinking of how (in)practical the different features of each item were and tried to get as much info from experienced sales associates as I could. In the end I was happy with everything I bought. I decided to rent the items I knew I would have little use for in MN (e.g., avalanche transceiver, crampons, mountaineering boots, helmet...etc). Otherwise, only a few comments here:

     - Rent or invest in true glacier glasses. My climbing partners complained of eye fatigue towards the end of each day and had sunburns behind their sunglass lenses. Turns out both were using polarized glasses w/o reflective lenses. I rented glacier glasses and was not squinting or fatigued at the end of each day.

Glacier glasses (left) vs cool shades (right)

     - Leave most of your compression sacks at home. When I flew out for the climb, I had everything compartmentalized into about four or five compression sacks and everything was a tight fit. Guides had us line our packs with heavy plastic garbage bags and stuff everything together. Seemed like I could fit twice as much in my pack. Turns out (obviously now) that stuffing everything together fills all the space, whereas the compression sacks act like hard spheres (recall the atomic packing factor from crystallography, anyone???).

In Ballard the night before the climb, reducing pack weight and ditching most of my compression sacks

     - I brought two pieces of 60" webbing. I've read posts where people didn't have a use for the webbing, thought I'd share my need for it. On the way up, I used one to fix the spike of my ice ax to the top of my pack (REI Mars 85) as there was not any easy way to do this using the pack's factory settings. On the way down, I used one to fix my ice ax, and the other to fix my crampons to the outside of my pack. The only thing I'd change is to bring 25-30" webbing instead of 60".

Food:

     The food AAI prepared for us (breakfast and dinner at Muir and Ingraham flats) was excellent. Hot tasty meals provided a huge boost. I could imagine that any form of MRE or instant/minute-ready type foods would not have tasted all that good. We were responsible for lunches and calories at each break. I brought the following and had no complaints:

Cold take-n-bake pizza from the night before (a few cold Alaskan Ambers would have been nice...)
Bagel/cream cheese/smoked ham sandwiches (very tasty and filling)
Fruit-filled cereal bars (didn't freeze and were palatable)
Cliff espresso shots (used on the summit push... really felt the diuretic effect of all that caffeine that day)
Hershey bars
Powdered Gatorade and Nescafe

Technical skills:

     We spent the morning at Camp Muir practicing the following skills relevant to steep slope and glacier travel:

     Self-arrest
     Climbing with crampons (pied en canard, pied à plat, pied troisième)
     Ice ax grips (self belay vs self arrest)
     Travel as a rope team

The lessons were brief and I know I'll need to practice them again the next time I'm on a glacier.