I had
joked on Facebook earlier in the day that if I didn’t make it back, please tell
my kids and grandsons I love them. I had
joked with the others on the trip, “If I don’t make it, tell our story. Tell it!”
But as we approached 10,000 feet, I had long since realized that this
was the dumbest thing I’ve ever done.
The air was thin. The mere
exertion of a few steps left us breathless.
We struggled to crest a slope that seemed as if it was beyond
cresting. I was genuinely afraid of any
number of calamities befalling us, and I genuinely regretted the flippant tone
of my Facebook post. I was actively
trying to suppress thoughts about the perils of our pending descent when there
it was, Camp
Muir, a base camp at just over 10,000 feet.
Now the
day had started innocently enough. We
were going to Mount Rainier,
and we were going to do some hiking starting at the Paradise Visitor
Center, which is about 5,400 feet above sea-level. Last year, during my annual training visit to
Fort Lewis, Washington, some friends and I had gone to Mount Rainier and walked
around a little at Paradise, and then we stopped along the way down for some
photo ops. My friend, Nate, had gone
last year later in the summer than I had, and he had done some hiking from
Paradise. A few of us decided that we
wanted to do some hiking there as well.
Somewhere along the way, we decided to go for Muir, perhaps after a fair
amount of oxygen deprivation.
 |
| Oxygen deprivation sets in. I couldn't even line-up my buttons. How embarrassing. |
I know
what you’re thinking, “Ted, you’re a bad-ass.
You’re in the army reserve for Pete’s sake. You’re a damn soldier!” And while all of this is true, none of it
could really prepare me for such a hike.
I may be in the army reserve, but I’m less than a year from my planned
retirement. I do have to pass the Army Physical Fitness Test, but I
have a bad back and a number of other chronic joint strains. I haven’t been able to do the run in about
two years because it leaves me with horrific back spasms for a week or so. Now, I do a two-and-a-half-mile walk instead
of a two-mile run. I do a remarkably
small amount of exercise, and I can’t do the sit-ups for the test anymore
because the last time I started to ready myself for the test, I had to stop
after four sit-ups. Yes, four. My back was killing me for the two weeks I
was waiting for an appointment with my chiropractor.
Can you
imagine how awesome I would be if I weren’t such a broken-down, injury-plagued,
old soldier? Yeah, it blows my mind
thinking about it, too.
My
friends, Jay and Bruce, who also made the climb, are in much better shape than
I. They actually work out and run and
shit like that. By the way, one of them
had the idea to keep climbing. It
certainly wasn’t my idea. I just wasn’t
ready to quit. I have this stupid thing
I do sometimes where I don’t like to show weakness. It doesn’t happen that often, of course. I am—all will agree—pretty damn awesome.
At some
point after Panorama
Point on the Skyline Trail, we kept climbing up. Nate stayed behind with the less experienced
climbers—even less experienced than us—but he planned to climb behind us and
meet us along the way. After Panorama we
saw increasingly fewer casual hikers. They
all had this fancy gear and experience and shit like that. As we left them in our wake, we all thought
that some of these
would have been a good idea, perhaps with some of these
or these. It would have been a good idea to have some
of these,
and one of these
may have come in handy as well. And on the descent, I would have preferred to
wear a pair of these
as I slid down the Muir Snow Field on my ass.
In
retrospect, we realized that we passed so many people because we were too dumb
to pace ourselves. I’ve said before that
no one ever accused me of not having half a brain. Well, yesterday on Rainier, I was using the
other half.
No,
we didn’t have any gear. I was wearing
my hiking shoes, shorts, a t-shirt, and a light button-down shirt, and I had a
fleece jacket, my wind breaker, and a change of socks in my backpack, nary a
stitch of Gore-Tex on my person. Jay and
Bruce were similarly equipped, although Bruce, being an experienced adventurer,
had a North Face jacket. I didn’t even
have sunglasses, and my anxiety about snow blindness
grew with each step after Nate pointed out that the conditions were ideal. No, we had no gear. Some may call it hubris. Some may call it foolishness. Me, I prefer to call it balls, and we were
fully equipped with three sets of brass ones.
 |
| This is how mountaineers view the world. Soak it in. |
And somewhere
between 7,500 and 8,000, feet we really started to notice the lack of oxygen,
but we climbed onward over the snow, trying to find paths where people had
already climbed, so we could use their steps.
As we climbed, our steps grew shorter, baby-steps up the Muir
Snow Field. With each step my
anxiety grew, and I started to feel that unfamiliar feeling that some of you
may call surrender. But the balls—or foolishness—in
me stifled any chance to give voice to that feeling, and I hoped that Jay or
Bruce would be the ones that decided we’d climbed high enough.
Like I said,
though, there it was, Camp Muir, close enough to give us a visual goal at the
end of the seemingly crestless slope of the snow field. We made it there, close enough to see the
tents of the climbers with, you know, well-formed plans of ascent. We approached to see the stone fortress of
Camp Muir, and we said, “Fuck it.”
Smoked, beaten, and—at least for me—feeling the anxiety of the pending
descent, we stopped and looked around. With
Mount Adams and Mount St. Helens in the distance, I don’t recall ever feeling
so awed and humbled by the blend of the beautiful, the grand, and even the terrifying in
the limitless vastness of nature.
Then,
as we sat in the snow—Jay and Bruce on their army wet-weather coats, me on my soon-to-be-drenched
LL Bean windbreaker—and changed our socks, I realized the full measure of
torture that the descent could bring.
The impact of each step downward would compound the pressure on the
stupid-ass bulging disc in my lumbar spine, inviting at least a few days’ worth
of muscle spasms. I reassured myself
that I could probably get some Flexeril at an
emergency room. But no, as we had seen
the experienced climbers slide down on their butts, we decided to try the
same. Often, a pile of snow would build
up in front of us, making the descent slow.
Jay and Bruce quickly abandoned this method and pretty much ran down the
snow field with gravity leading the way.
Me, I persevered, covering much of the snow field on my snow-drenched
and frozen ass.
 |
| That's an ice-cold mountaineer's ass, soaking up some rays on the descent. |
After
the snow field, the descent was quick, and each step was like sticking my foot
in a bucket of ice water. I made sure to
identify us as the biggest idiots on the mountain that day. Some people, not surprisingly, didn’t get
it. A couple people tried to argue their
case, but I pointed out that they had, well, appropriate gear. All we had were three sets of brass
ones. Case closed.
Back at Paradise, we quickly found Nate and the van. I got in the back and stripped from the waist down. I had nothing to change into. I just covered my lap and my junk with my button-down shirt and let the feeling come back to my ass as we got close to the Fort Lewis gate. On the van, someone read aloud from the Mount Rainier National Park brochure. It said that climbing Mount Rainier is hazardous and that the three key elements to a climb are proper equipment, experience, and excellent physical conditioning. I might suggest that they add serious balls to that list.
 |
| Three ill-equipped, albeit ballsy mountaineers. |
Climbing
to 10,000 feet on Mount Rainier is unquestionably the stupidest thing I have
ever done. I could continue to catalogue
the mistakes we made and the perils involved.
Screw that. Glory trumps
regret. I will not soon forget the
feeling of success and relief, the joy of a heretofore unimaginable
accomplishment, or the view from nearly two miles above sea-level.
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