Was up in Washington for my nephews wedding so I talked a fellow Sierra challenge participant to meet me to do Rainier. We met up at the visitors center at 3:30 he had already gotten our climbing permit so we went down to the overnight parking area which was all fogged in/in a cloud went through and packed our gear and tried to get some sleep, which for me didn’t happen very well.
Got up 11:15 pm and were hiking by midnight headlamps on and still in a cloud but the forecast was for good weather. Did have to use the GPS a couple times as could not see well and lots of tracks.
Made it to the Muir hut to eat, change clothes, crampons on and rope up. A group of 3 left before us after having stayed at the hut. We soon passed them.
Made it to the gap and onto the Ingraham glacier, which we got to take the Ingraham direct route. A great trail in the snow with some wands here and there from the guide companies, which were ahead of us. We did not need to use any of there protection. We passed a couple groups ahead of us carefully.
- Beautiful sunrise on way up
- Mt Adams through the gap
- Michael on the way up
- View on way up
Made it to the top at 8:30am getting passed on there way down by 4 guided groups.
- At the top
- Some crevasses
- More crevasses on way down
- Rainier from parking lot after returning beautiful day
Kristine
