Disappointment Cleaver/Rainier Summit — Saturday, Aug. 17, 2002

Friday August 16 Hooked up with Craig Beaver and we all (my wife, craig and I) headed up to Camp Muir to begin our ascent of Mt Rainier. We decided on the DC side since my summit via the Emmons side a month earlier made me think the emmons side might be a little more dicey. It was a beautiful day, and we got to Muir in just about 4.5 hours, but most of the time we spent trying to keep Craig back as he hauled all the way up there, even with his heavy pack. Many of the folks we talked to on their way down mentioned turning around high up on the mountain due to bad snowbridges and crevasses. I did not like this news, as this was to be my wife's 3rd attempt on the mountain and I wanted success. We set up camp under gorgeous skies and no wind. Saturday August 17 John was to arrive today and bring the rope for our summit bid on Sunday morning. It was windy the entire day, even though there we clear skies, the wind made it unbearable to stand out side as it was quite cold. John arrived around 3pm and set up camp next to us. We got our plan for the summit, and got great beta from Glenn at the ranger station at muir. He mentioned some junctions to watch for, and where to go on the cleaver, and where to move fast and such. Sunday August 18 (well, really saturday at 1130pm) The classic Suunto watch alarm whispered softly ""beep beep"" - the thing never works, but somehow we all wake up. We leave camp at 1230am and head out on the Cowlitz Glacier. There were about 2-3 crevasse crossings which were small but still exciting. We made our way up the scree hill called Cathedral Gap and continue on to Ingraham Flats. We meet some friends that had camped there but they were behind schedule so we continue on towards the dreaded ""cleaver"". We try to haul ass through the Ingraham Icefall, but the party infront of us is lost and cant get on the cleaver, and tension is high - we yell, but I don't think that helped. e finally get on the cleaver and make our way up what trail we think there is. RMI is 1.5 hours behind us, and we are almost in the pole position. After about on hour of hell we finally reach the top of the cleaver at 12,000 feet. It is real windy, and cold - we fuel up and continue on. We hit the junction and continue straight up, where the hell is the sun? It's only 430 so we still have got an hour before full sunrise. We loose our position while on our break and get stuck in a bottleneck. The trail is ridiculously marked as it is a 6 inch to 2 foot trench at times, switchbacking back and forth. This continues on and on, and we have to wait for all the teams in front of us, and few let us pass by. Afetr numerous false summits, and tedious switchbacks, we finally arrive at the summit at 7am. The wind has subsided and we all enjoy the glory of our adventure. Now the real test begins, getting down the cleaver. We turn around and begin the descent, we are the first ones to head down, and we have to cut switchbacks on crappy rime ice so that we can access the trail in between groups heading up. We finally get down to the cleaver and begin the descent. The other members decide that we descend another way than we came up, not too happy with this we head down the chossy pile of junk. We get lost several times, but find wands all over the place. It is real hot now, and we have all been up for 24 hours plus with an hour or so off sleep the night before, so we were all a little cranky. We finally get off the cleaver and back on the Ingraham Glacier. Never been so happy to get on a glacier before! But the fun is not over as we ahve to move through it quickly as it is an icefall above us. We get back to Ingraham Flats and collapse for a few minutes. We head towards Cathedral Gap and traverse the Cowlitz back top Muir. We arrive at our camp at exactly 12 noon, 11.5 hours muir to muir. We rest for about 1/2 hour and pack up our camp and head down from Muir, getting a few glissades here and there we get back to the cars around 4pm. Long day, but it was a successful climb. images and more soon to be posted @ nwog.org scott@nwog.org