4:00 am and it’s go time! One thing about a mountain base camp is that there is very little sleeping that happens. Some people roll in about midnight and set up camp while others start their climb as early as 2:00 am.
The rope is ready and the crampons go on.
Tom takes lead, I’m the middler, and Brain is the tail gunner.
Our route takes us generally straight in front of Tom. We will work our way up to the rock with the sun then below that rock ridge, into the saddle, up the ridge to the left of Tom then through the small gap between the rocks near the summit.
What you can’t see in this image is the giant smile on Brian’s face. Folks, this man is a real mountain man, while the rest of us just pretend. The interesting thing about this glacier climb is that the man in the back is actually the leader.
Oh Baby! What a day!
Sunrise!
One can just make out a faint trail on the glacier. We continue to work up below these rocks and to the ridge straight ahead. Then up the gap just on the right side of the summit.
Looking back down it is hard to capture the vastness of this glacier.
A selfie with Brian.
Shadows on the cliffs.
The sun felt good in the cool morning.
Dangers lurk everywhere around this mountain.
The North Pickets off the shoulder of Baker.
In this series of images I am attempting to show the scale of this mountain. They are all the same image, each one is a gradual blow up. In the first image of Tom, can you see the climbers in the upper left corner of the image? How about the first blowup to the left, the next blow up? Finally, the last blow up? There are two dots near mid image just under the rock ridge on the glacier.
I don’t usually put faces on this blog (maybe Larry on Mount Rushmore) but this is a great portrait of Brian taking a break.
Mount Rainer far off in the distance.
Going basically straight up now.
Brian takes a sort break to check his messages.
It’s hard to capture the slope with photographs but keep in mind that there is about 40 feet of rope between Brian and I and it looks like he is 40 feet below me.
Tom approaches the Roman Wall while dragging a backup rope?
After a pretty spicy climb up the Roman Wall we hit the summit field. The actual summit is in the distance.
Tom takes a moment as we work over to the summit. The other group on the summit gives one some scale.
Summit views! Did I mention it was a glorious day? Actually, the wind was blowing and it was quite chilly.
Looking south off the summit.
Mount Rainer among others.
After a few chilly moments on the summit, we drop back down off the Roman Wall. I wanted to get more photographs of this section but my hands were full and my sphincter was puckered. By the way, I think this is the first ever use of the word sphincter on Davefaitlemonde.
I realize this is a crappy image but it is a blow up of the image above and gives some scale of the Roman Wall as you can just make out the other climbers coming down. Flip back up to that image and it gives one a better sense of our task.
We were retracing our route back down the wall, along the rocks and down the glacier.
Again, this is a series of enlarged images showing the scale of the mountain. Can you see the three climbing groups in the first image?
It was about here that Tom threw a shoe but luckily Brian had a backup in his pack. For me, I just loved the snow parabola.
After a very hot decent on the glacier, we arrive back at camp. By now the snow had turned to mash potatoes and we were glad to be back on solid ground.
We pounded some lunch and broke down our camp which we had left fully set up about 7 hours ago.
Time to drop the last 2500 ish feet back to the van.
A final shot looking back up to the summit. We arrived back at the van about 4:00 and had a hot shower. We then headed to Sister Jill’s house for a fun evening of Thai Food with Brother Paddy. A big thanks to Brian for leading this expedition and to Tom for motivating the crew to make it happen.
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