Climbing team: Sam Carpenter, Mark May, Sheila Pyott.
Rainier is a monster, huge crevasses, seracs, rock fall. Our trip was uneventful as far as all of that goes, but I was incredibly nervous about all the objective danger. Mark can attest to my hysteria as he had to listen to me all the way down, saying things like climbing this mountain was the "dumbest thing ever" and I can't believe people put themselves through that dangerous obstacle course on a regular basis. Now it seems very silly, and I'd love to try a different route next year. We had perfect weather. There were three of us, but, unfortunately, Sam had to drop out above the Cleaver, as he was having pul. endema problems. He's totally fine after taking diamox and was able to head down by himself.
We took the Dissappointment Cleaver route, but did it in one push from Paradise parking lot, roped up at Camp Muir (10K), where we also melted more water, and kept going. Car to car, 9000 vertical in just shy of 24 hours, pace was pretty mellow, with regular breaks. We started from the parking lot at 6pm, got to Muir @10pm, headed out @ midnight, summitted at 8:30 am, back at the car just before 6pm, after a stop over at Muir again.
After driving back to Bend, turns out we had been up for about 40 hours ! It was totally thrilling.
