Mt. Rainier Near Miss - Friday, August 12th, 2022

Date: Friday, August 12th, 2022
Location: Gifford Pinchot National Forest, Pierce County, Washington
Partners: Alex S., Doug G., Nick M.
Conditions: Warm and sunny on the snow field up to Camp Muir. High winds and low visibility above 13,000ft, near “white-out”.
Notable Gear: Full camping setup up to Camp Muir; ice axe, crampons, belay parka for emergencies.
Report:

These are the same guys I’ve done a few other trips with including the John Muir Trail in California. We are all reasonably confident in our fitness and have inflated enough egos that we were only going to do this one unguided so we’ve all been excited to study up and slowly acquire the necessary gear and skills on our own.

We started up to the mountaineer camp on Thursday morning and it was a beautiful clear day. Made it to camp (Camp Muir climber’s camp, ~10,000ft) in good time, got set up and did some practice and rescue drills to get more comfortable as a 4 man rope team. We were under the impression weather would be ideal but ended up getting some late reports of high winds and low visibility at the summit from other climbers. Consensus was that it was approaching go/no go borderline conditions but still safe and reasonable to go for it. We did an “alpine start” which basically means starting in the middle of the night so the snow/ice/rock is more stable before the sun comes up. We only had a couple hours to sleep and the wind picked up and was whipping around the tent so much I really don’t think I slept at all. Started up the glacier around 2330 Thursday. We all felt good and made really good time in the dark. We were the first group up and a few teams started just behind us but we kinda left them behind pretty quickly. Every once in a while there’d be a vantage point to see the lines of headlamps in the dark further down the glacier but mostly it was just chugging upward. As the air gets thinner it feels more strenuous so we’d slow and rest occasionally. It was too cold to stop for too long though.

Around 13,000 feet we entered whatever storm was blowing in at the summit and it quickly became much colder, much windier, and pretty much “white out” visibility. Luckily, we were past most of the tricky route finding areas so we felt confident to keep going upward. We got all the way to 13,900 feet, only 400ft from the summit caldera with the conditions getting worse all the way. At that point we came across a 15-20ft ice bridge over the intersection of two VERY deep crevasses with no fixed protection (in some areas guide groups will fix anchors or lines you can clip into) and questionable integrity. We briefly debated continuing or turning back and ultimately decided to turn back due to the combination of high winds and questionable safety of the bridge. We then had to pass all of the groups behind us on the way down. Some of them turned back behind us, some proceeded over the bridge (we assume) with more complete equipment and experience to safely cross.

In the end we made it down safely and while we’re all painfully frustrated to get so close and basically go through all the exertion without getting to check off the summit, we think we made the right decision to turn back when the conditions, terrain and experience combined to be a bit over our heads. In retrospect we all think we 100% had it in the bag if not for that one ice bridge for whatever that’s worth… We’re all excited to keep practicing and go back for the summit next season and hopefully get some more volcano summits in Washington and South America soon.