We will never know what was going through the minds of the four climbers and two guides who perished on Washington’s Mount Rainier last week. The team checked in Wednesday night as they pushed toward the summit of the 14,410-foot inactive volcano, the most glaciated peak outside Alaska in North America with all the alpine attributes and dangers of taller peaks. All we know is something went wrong. The team was planning to push to the summit Thursday and return Friday. When they failed to show, a search ensued, and aircraft spotted a debris field 3,300 feet below Liberty Ridge, leading experts to conclude the climbers somehow plunged to their deaths. Avalanche beacon “pings” from under the snow confirmed the outcome. The climbers fell and died on the same mountain where 11 people lost their lives in 1981 in the deadliest mountaineering accident in U.S. history.
The climbers, no doubt, had heard of that accident and of the dangers, yet they decided to climb Rainier anyway. About 11,000 people make the same decision every year. About half reach the summit. I was one of them in 2005, deciding along with three friends to climb Rainier, which we'd stared at in awe every day of our lives growing up in Seattle. Some days you could see Rainier’s entirety, a massive postcard expanse dominating the view south of Seattle. Other days the clouds or rain or snow obscured the summit, a frigid reminder of what it must be like up there in a blizzard breathing half the usual oxygen. We decided to climb, just like the six who died. With 60-pound packs, headlamps, ropes and a pick-ax that could save your life should you need to thrust it into a sheet of ice during a fall, to break your slide and keep you from going over the edge into nothingness..
I trained every day for three months before the climb. You cannot over-train to climb a mountain, and certainly not a Rainier. We trekked from 5,000 to 10,000 feet in about seven hours, resting only a few hours, then headed out again at midnight, tired and cold but determined to do the thing we’d decided to do while wondering why the hell we were doing it and what we had gotten ourselves into. Night lamps and crampons on, beacons pinging, roped together close enough to help the climber ahead but far enough away so if something happened to him it might not happen to you. There’s a lot of trust on a mountain, anticipated and unseen dangers. You climb at night when the ice is the hardest and surest. You sweat during the climb then freeze when you stop for even a minute. Constantly moving, in one-hour increments, jumping crevasses, zigzagging glaciers, turning fast with razor vision whenever you hear the loud thunder of an ice sheet breaking away from the side of a cliff, always grateful a second later when you realize it’s far away and not right above you.
As we neared the summit, the 24 of us dwindled in number, the guides pacing you in the darkness to see if you should go onward. Those who’d had enough were applauded for their effort and taken safely down. One friend was such a climber. He, as they say, would not conquer the mountain that day. An hour later, about 1,500 feet shy of the summit, I thought I’d climbed my last step. Only a young guide with a steady gait and the confidence gained during 49 Rainier summits, convinced me to keep going. Higher. The guides played tricks with us, always saying the summit was “just beyond that next ridge”, but always there were more ridges above.
You will never see a more beautiful sunrise than from atop a mountain. We were trudging and tired and quiet and the guide who always said “Keep going”, for once told us to stop and turn around. And there they were. The very first rays of light to crack the purple-black sky, beaming from a sliver of sun on the eastern horizon. I was too tired to take a picture, we all were, but when I close my eyes I see it, still. A mountain holds incredible sights, things you have never seen and may never see again. I hold onto to images deep inside. You will never see in pictures what is known in the soul. Finally, we climbed “one more ridge” and down into the crater at the top of Mount Rainier. We’d made it. Happy but too tired to celebrate… a quiet victory… an accomplishment… a personal challenge thrown down and answered.
Maybe something similar was going through the minds of those climbers when they died on Rainier. We’ll never know. and I still don’t know why we climbed it, either. All I do know is that it was the most amazing, exhilarating adventure I have ever experienced in my life… something I’d set out to do and did… living life by my own compass, staring a danger in the face and defeating it. To live the fullest that life has to offer, to risk, try, give and put it all on the line, for the chance to feel something one has never felt before and might never feel again.
The climbers, no doubt, had heard of that accident and of the dangers, yet they decided to climb Rainier anyway. About 11,000 people make the same decision every year. About half reach the summit. I was one of them in 2005, deciding along with three friends to climb Rainier, which we'd stared at in awe every day of our lives growing up in Seattle. Some days you could see Rainier’s entirety, a massive postcard expanse dominating the view south of Seattle. Other days the clouds or rain or snow obscured the summit, a frigid reminder of what it must be like up there in a blizzard breathing half the usual oxygen. We decided to climb, just like the six who died. With 60-pound packs, headlamps, ropes and a pick-ax that could save your life should you need to thrust it into a sheet of ice during a fall, to break your slide and keep you from going over the edge into nothingness..
I trained every day for three months before the climb. You cannot over-train to climb a mountain, and certainly not a Rainier. We trekked from 5,000 to 10,000 feet in about seven hours, resting only a few hours, then headed out again at midnight, tired and cold but determined to do the thing we’d decided to do while wondering why the hell we were doing it and what we had gotten ourselves into. Night lamps and crampons on, beacons pinging, roped together close enough to help the climber ahead but far enough away so if something happened to him it might not happen to you. There’s a lot of trust on a mountain, anticipated and unseen dangers. You climb at night when the ice is the hardest and surest. You sweat during the climb then freeze when you stop for even a minute. Constantly moving, in one-hour increments, jumping crevasses, zigzagging glaciers, turning fast with razor vision whenever you hear the loud thunder of an ice sheet breaking away from the side of a cliff, always grateful a second later when you realize it’s far away and not right above you.
As we neared the summit, the 24 of us dwindled in number, the guides pacing you in the darkness to see if you should go onward. Those who’d had enough were applauded for their effort and taken safely down. One friend was such a climber. He, as they say, would not conquer the mountain that day. An hour later, about 1,500 feet shy of the summit, I thought I’d climbed my last step. Only a young guide with a steady gait and the confidence gained during 49 Rainier summits, convinced me to keep going. Higher. The guides played tricks with us, always saying the summit was “just beyond that next ridge”, but always there were more ridges above.
You will never see a more beautiful sunrise than from atop a mountain. We were trudging and tired and quiet and the guide who always said “Keep going”, for once told us to stop and turn around. And there they were. The very first rays of light to crack the purple-black sky, beaming from a sliver of sun on the eastern horizon. I was too tired to take a picture, we all were, but when I close my eyes I see it, still. A mountain holds incredible sights, things you have never seen and may never see again. I hold onto to images deep inside. You will never see in pictures what is known in the soul. Finally, we climbed “one more ridge” and down into the crater at the top of Mount Rainier. We’d made it. Happy but too tired to celebrate… a quiet victory… an accomplishment… a personal challenge thrown down and answered.
Maybe something similar was going through the minds of those climbers when they died on Rainier. We’ll never know. and I still don’t know why we climbed it, either. All I do know is that it was the most amazing, exhilarating adventure I have ever experienced in my life… something I’d set out to do and did… living life by my own compass, staring a danger in the face and defeating it. To live the fullest that life has to offer, to risk, try, give and put it all on the line, for the chance to feel something one has never felt before and might never feel again.
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