The Climb to Fight Breast Cancer: Mt. Rainier!

After months of fundraising for breast cancer research at Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center and training for the biggest hike of our lives, the weekend we'd been looking toward finally arrived. We were apprehensive about the journey before us, but we were also excited to go on an adventure of a lifetime. We didn't know what to expect, but we were willing to embark into the unknown.

Gear check was Friday, August 6 at 2 p.m. It seemed like we had been purchasing, renting and packing gear weeks prior, and now it was finally here. For the very first time, we met the other climbers who we would spend the next three days with at Alpine Ascents off of W. Mercer.

Below Brian is holding some gear for Joe, the operations supervisor, to check off the list. It took us about three hours to go through everything.

*To enlarge any photo, click it once.*

Our first day on Saturday was pretty uneventful, as most of us had hiked up to Camp Muir at least once before. We arrived at the Alpine Ascents office at 6 a.m., hopped in the van and drove to Ashford, where we stopped to get a quick breakfast of bagels and coffee at Whittaker's Bunkhouse, named after the famed climbers. There we met everyone in our climbing group including our four guides, Stuart, Ben, Matthew and Eitan. After breakfast, we drove to Paradise, put on our gear and got ready to go. It was a cloudy, foggy and misty day, which doesn't seem very fun to hike in, but is definitely preferred over a warm and sunny day. When the sun reflects off of the snow, it can start to drain and dehydrate people. We stopped every hour or so on the Muir Snowfield to take off our packs, eat a handful of food and drink a 1/2 liter of water. Brian and I had one slice of Papa Murphy's pizza at each stop along with gummie bears or trail mix. Yum.

Here's me on the way up the snowfield.

Our guide Eitan took lots of photos during our trip. Below is one such photo.

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Here's the view of the peak on our way up.

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Another gorgeous flower.

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Crystallized spider web.

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Flower mops?

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Here are some of our teammates at our first rest stop. Eitan (standing) liked Pringles.

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Brian on the way up.

Almost to our hut at Camp Muir.

I'm resting in the hut, which was more luxurious and warmer than a tent. It held all eight climbers (our guides slept in the food tent) easily with several layers of wooden bunks. We slept on a couple of sleeping pads and used our down jacket for a pillow.


Our guides made us burritos for dinner on Saturday night. It was a great feast that tasted pretty good compared to our usual snack of trail mix and Snickers bars.

The Sunday morning sunrise was absolutely breathtaking. We were above the clouds and appreciated the warmth of the sun.

It looked like a sea of clouds with snow-covered islands poking through.

The outhouse below was frequented by all of us during the day and at night. Not the best smelling outhouse we've ever been in, but it served its purpose. It's hard to say whether I preferred the outhouse over the blue bags. On one of my nightly outhouse breaks, I looked up into the sky and saw the brightest stars ever.


Here's another small hut for guides and park rangers.

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After not sleeping very well on Saturday night, I woke up early and saw the sunrise. I think I was still a bit out of it when I shot the video.

Here's a few teammates in our food tent on Sunday morning. We had eggs, bacon and pancakes for breakfast in addition to a hot drink or two.

One of our guides, Ben, is busy making blueberry pancakes. The guides fed us very well. In altitude, food takes on a more important purpose than at sea level. It is less for pleasure than for sustenance. The four things we needed at the most basic level were food, water, oxygen and sleep. Nothing else really mattered during our journey, so we became creatures of necessity.


I'm standing outside of the food tent before snow school. Lead guide Stuart and guide Eitan taught us the basics of hiking in snow and rocks with efficient and calf-saving steps. They also taught us the art of the self arrest with an ice axe while falling down a hill.
The guys are resting before we head up to high camp, Ingraham Flats. That's where we would have dinner and go to bed early for summit day on Monday. The rock fall area was crumbly and hard to hike on with our plastic boots and crampons.

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Cool shot of our whole team coming up the mountain.

Here's a glimpse of our tents. The night was chilly, but with 0 degree sleeping bags, it wasn't too bad.

The summit doesn't look very far from here, but it is about six hours and 3,000 ft. away.

Here's Little Tahoma, the little sister to Tahoma, which is the Native American word for Rainier. Little Tahoma is the second highest peak in Washington State.

Here's me at high camp. The chunks of ice behind me are called seracs, and some of them are as tall as hotels.

Our home away from home for the second night.

The large area of rock on the right is called Disappointment Cleaver...we learned the next day why it is called that.

The gang convened in the food tent for dinner...pasta with pesto sauce and pine nuts. And of course, hot and sugary drinks. They say that people can burn up to 7,000 calories per day on the mountain. More Snickers please!


That night our lead guide Stuart gave us his summit speech and mentioned that everything we had done up until this point had been a walk in the park. We weren't sure exactly what that meant, but we took him seriously.

This is the only picture with the two of us together all weekend. We were always busy doing something and we never really had a chance to stop to photograph just the two of us.

The next morning, the guides woke us up at 1:15 a.m. We didn't sleep much on Saturday or Sunday night so it was tough waking up that early. It was about zero degrees on summit morning and as soon as we got out of our sleeping bags, we started to shiver. We put on all of our gear and headed into the food tent for a breakfast of oatmeal and apple cider. After using the (snow fort) bathroom for the last time, we got roped in around 2 a.m. Brian and I were on the last rope with our guide Matthew.

We started hiking, crossed a small crevasse or two and started up Disappointment Cleaver. The cleaver is about a 1,000 ft climb up rocks of all shapes and sizes. I was struggling to hike up the rocks and at some points, I needed Matthew to pull me up the ledge. My heart was beating extremely fast and I was quickly getting fatigued. I was starting to doubt my heart's ability to keep up the pace at altitude. I was born with a hole in the septum between my two ventricles (ventricular septal defect), and I was starting to worry about stressing my heart too much.

Two hours later, the toughest two hours of my life, we arrived at the top of Disappointment Cleaver. The other two rope teams were already there eating their snacks and drinking water. Brian and I quickly removed our puffy down jackets from our packs, sat down and ate a Snickers bar. Matthew asked me how I was feeling and if I could continue. I thought about it for a few minutes and decided that I didn't want to inflict any more stress on my heart and I also didn't want to put my rope team at risk. I wasn't sure how much harder it got, and mistakes on the mountain can be deadly.

I decided to turn around, which was a difficult decision after months of training and fundraising. But ultimately it was the right thing to do. I said goodbye to Brian, told him to take a picture at the top and to be safe. He was more than prepared for the summit, and I didn't want to hold him back. We decided prior to the climb that if one of us couldn't make it, then the other would continue on, and I still felt comfortable with our decision. At that point Stasia, another climber on the second rope, decided she was going to turn back too, so Eitan roped us up and we turned to go down to Ingraham Flats.

Eitan takes photos on his climb trips for his blog "In the Hills and on the Rocks," so we were fortunate to be going down with him. He was able to capture the phenomenal sunrise.

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Stasia and I arrived at base camp around 6 a.m. I think. It is hard to tell what time it is on the mountain because of the light reflecting off of the snow. We had some time to clean up our tents, eat a little bit, and then move down to Camp Muir along with Sandra to wait for the rest of the crew.

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On to part two of our story...while I was heading down from a disappointing hike on Disappointment Cleaver, Brian was going up the mountain for a chance at the summit. He was feeling well enough, with only a light case of altitude sickness at the first break and was able to stop to take a few photos and video along the way.

You can tell how much higher he is from this photo.

Around 8 a.m. on 8/9/10, Brian, Matthew and Patty summited Rainier. They enjoyed walking around the crater and taking pictures. They could see and smell the sulfur vents from the active volcano.

Here's another group resting at the summit.

Although it appears that there is a point higher than Brian, this picture is taken at the summit looking south towards the crater. The rim of the crater consists of exposed rocks due to the strong winds and weather that blows across the summit.

Looking south from the summit. The rocks are the rim of the west side of the crater. Although there are lots of footprints around the summit, there were not many climbers at the summit. Maybe 30-40 climbers at the crater/summit Monday morning.

It's hard to tell the difference between the snow and the clouds in this shot.

Brian and his rope team decided to do some exploring around the rim of the crater.

Here's the five climbers who summited (Brian, Chris, Patty, Angie, Don and Stuart). They are holding the Climb to Fight Breast Cancer banner.

After about 45 minutes at the summit, Brian, Matthew and Patty started heading down from the summit. Brian was able to snap a few more photos on the way down. This photo is at around 14,000 ft. It is hard to comprehend the elevation at that level. The cloud layer is about a mile below them at this point. This is taken in the south eastern direction.

The thick layer of clouds hid most of the mountain scenery. We heard it was raining in Seattle at this time.

After descending over 4,000 ft from the summit, the final leg of the journey was to trek down from Camp Muir. The trail is well traveled as seen in the photo below. It seems as if the trail just disappears into the clouds.
Since they were quite a bit behind the first group, Brian's group didn't meet up with everyone until Paradise around 6 p.m. At that point everyone was exhausted and ready to go to dinner. We piled in the van and drove to Copper Creek, a restaurant in Ashford just outside of the park.

As a team that night, we enjoyed celebrating our unique accomplishments. Each person achieved a different goal, whether it was making it to the top, getting past Muir, carrying a 40 lb. pack, or something else. We all pushed beyond what we thought were our limits. And not only that, we raised money for breast cancer research at the Hutchinson Center. Ultimately we knew that no matter how high or far we got on the mountain, we still made a difference.

We returned to Seattle that night around 10:30 pm, and after three days of camping in the snow, hiking at altitude with 40 lb. packs, eating hardened Snickers bars, using the stinky outhouse, and breathing heavy to avoid headaches, we were more than ready to take a warm shower and sleep in our own bed.

When asked if we'd ever climb Rainier again, we chuckle softly and reply with a shake of our head. It's a once in a lifetime experience, we say with a hint of reverence toward the mountain. We tried it, journeyed outside our comfort zones, learned a lot, and tested our physical and mental boundaries. That's not to say that we won't hike other smaller peaks, but we're content to check Rainier off our list for now...