Well, here I am, sitting in one of my favorite rest positions- at a cafe table at Ladro. I've not blogged in a while, as the clusterfuck of illness and mountain-climbing sapped my brains, will, and time. I'm mostly recovered. But I do kind of feel like heavy physical exertion makes you dumber for a while. Maybe just me; I won't make generalizations that may offend.
I climbed Mt. Adams. It was awesome, but I was sick. Real sick. So I had to make the call to not climb Rainier. I'll get to the Rainier discussion later, but I'm trying to feel good about the fact that I did climb Adams, and not dwell on the fact that I didn't do the other.
We (best friend from highschool Nanako, also hschool friend Alicia, two ladies from San Diego Celeste and Lourdez, our guide, Mick, and assistant guide Grant) set out from Seattle thursday the 3rd on a trek down to Adams, which is a 5-hour drive, and an hour east of Portland just north of the Oregon-Washington border. We camped at Lewis and Clark state park, which I believe is near Chehalis. I was super sick, the constantly-coughing-up-fluorescent-mucous kind of sick. We slept on the ground in our sleeping bags, sans tents, and by the time we got up at seven (didn't sleep so well with the coughing and the early light and the goddamn tweeting birds {what is this, Snow fucking White? I've never heard so many goddamn tweeting birds in my life.}), I had created a charming cesspool beside my cocoon. Had bag-packing 101, weighed in (I had the lightest pack, at 42.5 pounds, woo!), and set off on our way toward the mountain.
Mick told us to hydrate up on the way, and I obediently did, apparently to excess, as I was in a lot of pain on the drive from my peanut-sized bladder being over capacity. I made the caravan stop twice (via text-message), once with me comically hurtling toward the rest stop restroom only to end up standing in a line, and the second time even more comically bailing from a moving vehicle at the main intersection in Hood River to bulldoze my way through some kid's pizza party, in so much pain I couldn't even fathom stopping to attempt to form words to ask permission from the management (my apologies, Andrew's Pizza and Bakery). We were behind schedule to begin with, and combined with confusion after loss of cell reception, and at the
ranger's station, we ended up a few hours later than desired at the trailhead.But up we went, enjoying the nice weather from our stylish plastic boots. Plastic boots hauling novices and their fifty-pound packs up the slope, in combination with backcountry wayfinding makes for a really-ephing-slow trek. We made only about 2000 feet of elevation gain that afternoon before needing to set up camp for the evening. We dug out platforms for the tents and had a delicious protein and carbo-load feast of sausage-pesto pasta, soup and bread.
To our pleasant surprise, Mick extracted champagne and sparklers from his pack in honor of our true Independence, and we celebrated the Fourth from our camp at treeline overlooking White Salmon and Hood River. I thought I saw some flashes, but there wasn't anything spectacular to see from above in the form of pyrotechnics. Mick's sparklers saved the day for backcountry patriotism; whew.
Clouds blew in that night and we woke up to an overcast setting. My plastic boots were rubbing my feet and ankles raw in a couple of places, and by the end of the previous night it couldn't be avoided that something more than my band-aids had to be applied, so in the morning we tried to bandage them up. Initially Mick thought the best thing we had was duct tape, and he wrapped a layer of that around my ankles, but then it turned out someone had sports tape, and we added some of that as well. It was awkward, and a little uncomfortable, but better than the painful rubbing. (this, erin, is where you snicker at my shoe-foot catastrophe legacy.)
After breakfast we packed up camp and slogged through our first couple of snowfields in the increasing precipitation. We stopped at lunch for snowclimbing 101. The weather had turned kind of miserable, to some mist and hail/sleet business (well, we were in the clouds, after all), and it wasn't letting up. Though I was kind of feeling like a lame duck with my phlegmy wheezing and slowness, I really enjoyed and kicked ass in the snow climbing department. Perhaps it was because I got to take off the pack. We learned different step techniques (one of them, called the French Technique, haha, I enjoy and am quite good at), learned how to use the ice axe, and also learned self-arrest (handle running across the chest from shoulder to hip, between the boobies, then you flip over to throw a tantrum in the snow). We learned how to glissade, which as I'd like to provide some trivia, is French for "slide," which is exactly what it
is- a fun way to efficiently descend (and your knees thank you). Woo! I was also very successful and enthusiastic at that. After lunch we gained about another thousand feet and set up high camp at the toe of the White Salmon glacier in preparation for our summit attempt the next morning.High camp was at maybe around 8500 feet, with tents dug into the base of the glacier, the camp "kitchen" on the rocks overlooking the woods and vague notions of civilization to the south, the "gear-age" with all our junk in another area on the rocks. Pottying occured downslope on the rocks. Gotta love being above treeline; it redefines privacy.
Pooping in the backcountry occurs one of two ways for the responsible hiker/climber- burying or carrying. Though I've heard typically the "blue bags" on other mountains are just a bag for your poop, on Adams the rangers distribute an elaborate "waste pack-out system:" ziplock bag with paper bag containing kitty litter, paper towel, and printout with instructions on one side, large target on the other. You can either go onto the target, or pick it up using the paper towel. It's pretty awesome. Especially awesome if your body freaks out and refuses to go for days like mine did, then has to go three times on the last day. We buried it all in the snow until the last possible minute, but the descent back into the balmy July heat made the packs less
than pleasant as we headed back down later. Yick.Before heading to bed early that night in preparation for our 2am summit attempt, we all learned to rope up as a team, tied our prussiks, and selected positions on the rope with a setting of a stunning sunset drawn out behind cirrussy clouds. Then we attempted to get a few hours of sleep.
Sadly, I was really really freaked out, between the ankle/foot issues, which had added bruising in addition to the rubbing at that point, and the sick issues, and I didn't get a wink of sleep.
I got up feeling even more neurotic than the night before, but after a wimpy "I'm not so sure about this" to a guide who didn't respond, along I went. We roped up and headed straight up the glacier in the darkness, headlamps gleaming like some sort of candlelight procession. It got gradually steeper and steeper, and I could feel the effect of the altitude in combination with my cold in my wheezy breathing and lack of endurance. I guess that we were moving along more of a 45 degree slope in the end, but some suggested that may have been an exaggeration. May have been less, but it was definitely steep. As it got steeper and we got slower, it evolved into a sort of comedy of errors. We had a ridiculous amount of ice-axe-dropping incidents along the way, due to our newness in using them and lack of wrist straps (I was the only one who had one, but Mick told me not to use it in order to learn how to use the axe properly). Then something was rolling down the slope, and there was this big commotion which I couldn't understand because it was very windy and we were twenty feet apart, but someone yells to catch it, and as I'd offered to take the rear position, I was the last hope, so I dive to catch it like a goalie, and I do. But I pick it up, and look at it, and it's a fucking rock. Small boulders were falling down the slope. On its trip plummeting down the slope at a good clip, this one had hit Celeste, two people ahead of me, in the calf before continuing on its way. She was okay enough and highly motivated, but they kept falling and we were tasked with the job of dodging them and yelling to warn others down the slope. For some reason Alicia dropped her gloves and I caught those too, in an even more impressive goalie-dive. Maybe I should have taken up a different sport.
Because I was slow and wheezing and kept calling "zero," the code to stop, I managed to lose any good pace and drifted a little over and down too much and found myself having to cross this big crack, a mini-crevasse, that no one ahead of me had had to. So I stop the team, and ask Mick what to do, as we'd had no crevasse training, and he just yells to jump. Kind of expected "idiot" to follow his response, the way he said it. But I was really tired, and he didn't give me a rest as I think he just wanted to clear all of the falling rocks coming down the slope. So I jumped, but the upward incline and the fatigue got to me and I made it only as far as the opposite edge, and my boot hit the edge of the surface and sent me ricocheting backward. At which point I of course drop my ice axe, it skitters down the slope fifty feet, and I catch myself from sliding by hanging onto the downslope edge of the crack. Tired and hurting and very disappointed, I had to take that moment to put my face into the snow and sob.
That only lasted for a few seconds, however, and then I was back up and leading my team back down the slope toward my ice axe. As I stop to turn around and descend, a large airborne rock whizzes between Alicia and I, passing me by only eighteen inches or so. I had only a last-minute warning on that one, and was told that my half-assed jump to the side looked like something from a cartoon. Alicia, more cautious, nervous, and new to climbing than even me, took this moment to announce dramatically and loudly that that was it, she was done and not going further.
It was an epic few minutes. Mick announced that he had already decided to continue by leading us a different route, but we had to persevere on, and we hauled our asses up the remaining, steepest slope, and collapsed into the rocks on the ridgeline at the top.
Our (lack of) speed and the presence of many objective hazards, Mick said, caused him to decide to continue no further, not even as a smaller team. We'd made it to nearly ten thousand feet, with a summit at 12 thousand, and it was fine by me. I was in not-so-good shape, and the view was pretty damn awesome from where we were, anyway. The weather was good that morning, and we could see Mt Hood, and a beautifully clear Mt St Helens, emerging from seas of tiny pipe-cleaner-like trees and soft clouds. We fueled up, Nanako took an emergency pee in the open air on the ridge, and we began our descent.
Much of the descent back to high camp was scree, a combination of fluffy mineral soil, rock, and boulders, that we had to get through with crampons on pretty steep slopes, and it was tricky. I don't think there's a lot of allowance for clumsiness in successful mountaineering. Alicia actually took a dramatic, rolling fall down a steep slope. But we also got do descend on snow, both on foot, and by glissading, yay. The main snow slope we descended was very steep, and looked nearly 100 percent vertical from camp (it wasn't of course). That was pretty cool.
We had a snack, took a nap, and then broke down camp and began the final descent. Putting the full packs on (summitted with about ten pounds) and descending back into the vague backcountry was pretty arduous. We may have glissaded too much directly down, which caused us to not traverse enough, and stuck us on the wrong side of a steep, rocky drainage (and its siblings), which was kind of a bitch to traverse across in order to find the trail back. We were hot, tired, and dehydrated by the time we hit the trail.
Mick kept passing streams in order to keep us moving toward the trailhead, and we deliriously wanted to kill him by the time we finally did get a drink. My feet were so bruised and sore, and I was so tired and thirsty that I turned into a zombie, trying to tune everything out in order to focus my energy to getting to the car. After I saw a recognizable point I remember passing not too long after the trailhead when we set out, I began dreaming up car mirages in my mind, thinking they'd just be right there, right after the next bend... time seemed to cease.The trailhead did eventually come, though! We gathered, took a group photo, deposited the bags of poop, took off our boots, and gathered to have a celebratory beverage. My ankles were so disgusting. The duct tape had caused nasty abrasions that were getting all gross and infected, and I had a few rubbed and blistered areas. I felt pretty shitty with my cold, but was very happy to have done it. We gave the group gear back to Mick and headed out to Hood River for dinner together along with a debrief. It turns out that there was a significantly easier route along the south slope that requires no roping up and not much crampon use, in retrospect. Mick had decided to take us up a very difficult route to give us experience for Rainier. I wished he'd briefed us initially as to his approach to everything, I kind of went a little crazy after hearing this as I'd been thinking I was a major weenie and was very disappointed how everything went.
It was a very long, late, delirious drive back to the Puget Sound, and we ended up getting in at 2 am and I spent the next two days slightly comatose and recovering. I was pleasantly astonished to know that my training was quite effective as I had no soreness following the hike, just tight calves the next morning. Still surprised about that. I'm no athlete by nature, so that's a victory for me in itself.
In the end, I was really frustrated by my situation, but had to make the call not to do Rainier due to my cold, my ankles, and the fact that we had barely three days of downtime to regroup. My mind was not ready to do it, apparently, as I had to let Mick and my friend and coworker Sarah talk me into feeling capable, and then had a meltdown the night before leaving for Rainier. I drove down to Gig Harbor that night, just to see if I felt better, but I didn't. I'm generally bummed, but I know I made the right decision.
I'm reminding myself that climbing Adams was awesome in itself and I do really feel good and right about my choice not to do Rainier. I realized a lot about myself, through the training and climbing. One thing is that the exercise in training was not only great for physical health but great for the brain. I had no realization just what the adrenaline and endorphines would do for my state of mind, but it's like nothing else. However, I established, during my Adams climb, that I'm not the kind of person that really thrives on adrenaline enough to want to do it a lot. Intense mountaineering seems to require an efficiency and brain-focusing that doesn't fit my personality really well. There was not enough resting, no contemplating, not enough discussion for me to really truly love it like I love a lot of my pastimes. I loved it, but it was grueling, and I wanted to also be able to stop and appreciate the surroundings and experience more than we were able to. I'm also extremely deliberate, and I like to be able to think and talk things through before doing them, and you can't, quite as often, as you have to keep pace to make your goals. We did have some time-management issues that might not manifest themselves in all trips, but this trip also made me appreciate the less-intense day hikes and backpacking that I've done before, and in training, and make me want to do more of them now in my free time.
I may still do Rainier someday, but I know I won't be dong a major mountain every weekend. This has made me remember other things I love, too- I miss my family, and friends, and art and travel and swimming and books and movies and gardening. I have other things I want to pick up again. I want to begin the process of planning to move to New York.
The remaining four went up Rainier to stunningly beautiful weather this weekend. I kept my eye on that perfectly clear mountain from the city all three days they were up there.
It turns out they all, minus one, got sick with my cold. I feel super bad about it (guess I should have been slathering on the Purell; I thought I was way better before I got on the mountain). They were slow and felt terrible and must have been cursing my name. Nanako and Mick summited alone out of the group, almost to the top minus six hundred feet, both super sick (he had a fever) on a beautifully clear Saturday morning. I'm very proud of them (in a non-condescending way).
And now, just a few minutes ago, I saw in the news that Adams is spewing smoke from a 500 acre forest fire at the trailhead (Cold Springs) we left from and the Forest Service closed the area. WTF?!
Straaange world.
