Route Climbed: Ingraham Glacier Direct Date Climbed: May 26, 2003
Justin, Brandon, Erricos, and I hiked up to Muir on Saturday morning, then waited out the bad weather for 36 hours. We received clear skies and cold temps when we left for the summit at 1:40 AM on Memorial Day.
The first 3,000 feet of the climb went very quickly and we rapidly passed several other groups. I came down with AMS at about 13,500 feet while bonked from a lack of appitite, and dehydrated because our water was frozen solid. I've never had to dig as deep physically in my life just to keep putting one more foot forward. The summit finally arrived around 7:00 with zero degree temps and very strong winds, as a lenticular had formed.
On the descent, Erricos slipped down a slope into a crevasse. I took the fall by diving unto the snow bridge of a nearby gigantic crevasse to brace myself. Justin and Brandon attempted an extraction, while I held my end. Eventually, after nearly 30 minutes for struggling, we lowered Erricos down (thank god it was a small crevasse). He then rapped down to the path below, after we set up our second rope as a fixed line. This little incident definately made the climb more exciting.
The rest of the descent wasn't bad, and the Muir snowfield descent had about 1,500 feet of glissading. A very interesting trip.
Route Climbed: Cleaver, Emmons, Liberty Ridge, Date Climbed: July, '95-'08
1995 Cleaver Rt., with Doug Churchhill
1996 Emmons Rt., with Jeff Slepski and Tim
Also did the Cleaver Rt., twice in the next week
1997 Emmons Rt., with wife Melody, John @ Evan Holt
1998 Cleaver Rt., with Lewis Gunn and Andrea
2004 Cleaver Rt., with Oliver Jones
2006 Liberty Ridge with Pete Kirkham and Don Pusateri
2008 Cleaver Rt., with Jeff Slepski, Pete Kirkham, Don Pusateri,
A very interesting place, always changing and very dangerous.
Route Climbed: Disappointment Cleaver Date Climbed: Aug 17, 2002
Beautiful weather on the way up, 50 mph winds on the summit. The snow bridges were all fine. We saw a BIG chunk of ice fall downhill from us on Ingraham which scared the hell out of us, but we were done with most of the descent by then.
Weathered off the DC with Pete and Jim. Returned the next week with Pete and Andy for calm grey weather and lengthy end runs. Packed lighter and enjoyed the hike to Glacier Basin. On the summit by 10:45 am after a bivy near the Turtle.
Route Climbed: Der Fuhrer's Finger Date Climbed: July 2002
Jah, das ist recht meine frauleins, ich climbe der Fuhrers Finger und ich used eine Munter hitch to belay Herr Knudsen off the Kautz kopf-wall.
A nice day and the route was pretty sweet too. Those pickets left next to the traverse under the ugly cliff looked mighty tempting to claim as booty, except they were attached with cord like a fixed line :(
Nice "cave" at the 9200ft bivy. Also nice checking out the Chinook circling over the DC area for the whole day.
Route Climbed: Dissapointment Cleaver Date Climbed: June 22, 2001
This was my second attempt to summit Rainier. My first attempt was one year and one day earlier. I learned a lot from my first time on the mountain. Be in the best physical shape that you can get into before you make an attempt. The better shape you are in then the more fun the climb will be. The first year was with a RMI expedition climb. What I learned on that trip was well worth the expense. This summit was with a friend that was an experienced climber. I was fortunate to have weather good enough to climb in on both my trips. See Alpine Air 2000, and Return to Rainier in my reports section.
Route Climbed: Disapointment Cleaver Date Climbed: July 8, 2001
July 7, 2001, Pat, Scott, Steve and I headed out from the Paradise ranger station on a beautiful sunny day and climbed up to Camp Muir arriving around noon. We set up camp and prepared for a midnight push for the summit. The night was crisp and cloudless with a full moon so headlamps were not really needed. With Steve leading the rope team we reached the summit at 7am and only passed one other group of climbers. We spent some time at the summit and there were quite a few larger slow moving teams we passed on the way down. We spent another night at Camp Muir, while most other people packed up and headed off the mountain. The next day Scot skied down the Muir snow field while the rest of use used sitting glissades. Since we planned 5 days for this trip and only used 2 to climb Mt. Rainier we went up and checked out the Ho Rain Forest. This climbing trip couldn’t have been more perfect! Darryl
Route Climbed: Ingram Direct Route Date Climbed: March 24, 2001
Our group of six students from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign decided to spend our Spring break by climbing Mt.Rainier. Once we get to Paradise (5500 ft) we started to hick through a deep snow to Camp Muir. (10000 ft). The last 100 m were quite difficult. The weather was getting worse and with terrible wisibility we could hardly kept ourself from falling at constant 40mil/hour wind gust. After waiting 2 days for good weather we finally made our first attempt to reach the summit by the Gibraltar Ledges. Since we never climbed together. We moved pretty slow. Thus at about half point we decided to turn back. The second attempt was more successful. We started at 12:00 am and chose to go by Ingram Direct Route. It was quite an exhaustive strenuous walk through the deep (some times waist deep) snow. Finally we reached the Summit of Mt. Rainier. The most interesting part was that we also had to walk back to the parking lot and drive to the airport. On the way dow from the camp Muir we got lost in the dark. After camping in the snow we decent early in the morning.
Route Climbed: Disappointment Clever Date Climbed: July 1995
Summited with James A. Harrison, Jr., of Santa Fe, New Mexico. We drove from Albuquerque, NM (24 hours straight), arrived at Paradise in the morning, and made our way to Camp Muir. We left for the summit early the next morning (1 a.m.), tagged it at about 7:00, and made it back down to Muir by noon or so. We hauled butt down to Paradise, drove to Yakima, got a hotel, and slept for about 15 hrs before returning to Albuquerque the next day. It was a very beautiful summit day: no clouds, and no wind. The problem, though, was the crowds: we were in a traffic jam all the way to the summit (this was a weekend). Next time, I'll make sure to go during the middle of the week.
Route Climbed: Disappointment Cleaver Date Climbed: August 21, 2002
Great Climb. Camped at Camp Muir for 1 night and left for the summit at 12:00AM. Enjoyed a calm night. Had alot of trouble with one of my crampons in the bowling alley. I definitely recomment making sure that they fit snuggly the night before. Had to go up to Ingrahm Flats with just one crampon. The Cleaver was not very challenging. Huge crevasses around 13,000 feet opening up right in the middle of the route. Took alot of time to test snow bridges for stability. Definietely recommend taking glacier and crevasse seminar before climbing without a guide. Calm weather at the summit. Enjoyed the entire climb and intend to return to try another route very soon.
Route Climbed: Disappointment Cleaver Date Climbed: September 7, 2002
Coming from sea level I experienced altitude problems when I reached Camp Muir. *$#%@#!! But after resting for a few hours I felt fine when we started for the summit at 2am. Pressure breathing all the way to the top worked wonders and I experienced no ill effects at all. A beautiful mountain. The Cleaver itself was challenging, but not as difficult as I expected after reading some trip reports. I imagine this was because it was dry.
Route Climbed: Emmons direct Date Climbed: August 2000
Good conditions and not too many RMI trains to pass. Passed at 14,000 ft. by a North Face R&D team of two Brazilian brothers literally running up the glacier in trail shoes to tag the summit for the second time in as many days. Mutants.
Route Climbed: Liberty Ridge Date Climbed: July 1-3 , 1985
The mountain in 1985 was in 100 year drought and blue with ice. Andy Fried, Robert Somoano and I, climbed the Libery Ridge in the kind of conditions, you would expect to see in September. Blue ice was everywhere, something the three of us from Southern California just couldn't get enough of. We spend three days on the route, mostly because we really had to ice climb the route, it was pretty technical. I made a note to myself after we came down, not to ever wonder why so many climbers from the Northwest US had so much success in the High Mountains. With "training" ground like this, no wonder. This was one beautiful big mountain climb, a line I will never forget.
Route Climbed: Dissapointment Cleaver Date Climbed: July 17th 2000
Stayed at Muir after a long HOT day on the Muir Snowfeild. Left around midnight and proceeded over DIssapointment Cleaver to witness several teams backed up in the Igram Flats area. As we rested on top of the cleaver we watched the sun rise over the Cascades and watching the string of lights still backed up in the Flats. After watching all the teams backed up in the Ingram Flats area and listening to constant rockfall coming from the frock face to the south of the route I descided I would never ascend through that area.
After two days at Camp Muir, just bumming around and enjoying the weather we departed around midnight to the light of the full moon. The three of us reached the plateau and Ingraham flats within an hour from Camp Muir. We passed three other teams on the cleaver with minimal rock fall from above. some slmall ice falls on the Danger Traverse below the cleaver. By 1:30 we had gained the cleaver above 11,000 ft. Great weather and clear skies with minimal wind up to about 14,000 ft. reached the crater by 5:30, beautiful sunrise and wonderful decent. I experienced some light-headedness as a result of my frozen camel back hose and thus, dehydration. overall, a beautiful climb.
Had we stayed at Ingram Flats for another hour, we would have witnessed the avalanche that swept two parties off the cleaver., killing one that day. Always climb early!
Martin Cash - May 27, 2003 12:27 am
Route Climbed: Ingraham Glacier Direct Date Climbed: May 26, 2003Justin, Brandon, Erricos, and I hiked up to Muir on Saturday morning, then waited out the bad weather for 36 hours. We received clear skies and cold temps when we left for the summit at 1:40 AM on Memorial Day.
The first 3,000 feet of the climb went very quickly and we rapidly passed several other groups. I came down with AMS at about 13,500 feet while bonked from a lack of appitite, and dehydrated because our water was frozen solid. I've never had to dig as deep physically in my life just to keep putting one more foot forward. The summit finally arrived around 7:00 with zero degree temps and very strong winds, as a lenticular had formed.
On the descent, Erricos slipped down a slope into a crevasse. I took the fall by diving unto the snow bridge of a nearby gigantic crevasse to brace myself. Justin and Brandon attempted an extraction, while I held my end. Eventually, after nearly 30 minutes for struggling, we lowered Erricos down (thank god it was a small crevasse). He then rapped down to the path below, after we set up our second rope as a fixed line. This little incident definately made the climb more exciting.
The rest of the descent wasn't bad, and the Muir snowfield descent had about 1,500 feet of glissading. A very interesting trip.
wallspeck - May 20, 2003 10:37 pm
Route Climbed: Cleaver, Emmons, Liberty Ridge, Date Climbed: July, '95-'081995 Cleaver Rt., with Doug Churchhill
1996 Emmons Rt., with Jeff Slepski and Tim
Also did the Cleaver Rt., twice in the next week
1997 Emmons Rt., with wife Melody, John @ Evan Holt
1998 Cleaver Rt., with Lewis Gunn and Andrea
2004 Cleaver Rt., with Oliver Jones
2006 Liberty Ridge with Pete Kirkham and Don Pusateri
2008 Cleaver Rt., with Jeff Slepski, Pete Kirkham, Don Pusateri,
A very interesting place, always changing and very dangerous.
krishna - May 12, 2003 2:15 pm
Route Climbed: Disappointment Cleaver Date Climbed: Aug 17, 2002Beautiful weather on the way up, 50 mph winds on the summit. The snow bridges were all fine. We saw a BIG chunk of ice fall downhill from us on Ingraham which scared the hell out of us, but we were done with most of the descent by then.
cuprina - Mar 13, 2003 3:35 pm
Route Climbed: Disappointment Cleaver Date Climbed: July 2001, 2002Summited twice in 2001 and 2002 over Independence Day weekend. Great weather both times. Want to come back this year again, via different route.
Honkeydong - Mar 11, 2003 1:45 pm
Route Climbed: 1st: DC, 2nd: Emmons glacier Date Climbed: Sept 1998Weathered off the DC with Pete and Jim. Returned the next week with Pete and Andy for calm grey weather and lengthy end runs. Packed lighter and enjoyed the hike to Glacier Basin. On the summit by 10:45 am after a bivy near the Turtle.
MikeB - Mar 9, 2003 5:13 pm
Route Climbed: Fuhrer Finger Date Climbed: July, 1997No summit, but climbed chute twice in one day.
ktnbs - Mar 7, 2003 9:56 pm
Route Climbed: Disappointment Cleaver Date Climbed: July 7, 1978With Marty Hoey as lead rope.
Pencil Pusher - Mar 7, 2003 12:46 am
Route Climbed: Der Fuhrer's Finger Date Climbed: July 2002Jah, das ist recht meine frauleins, ich climbe der Fuhrers Finger und ich used eine Munter hitch to belay Herr Knudsen off the Kautz kopf-wall.
A nice day and the route was pretty sweet too. Those pickets left next to the traverse under the ugly cliff looked mighty tempting to claim as booty, except they were attached with cord like a fixed line :(
Nice "cave" at the 9200ft bivy. Also nice checking out the Chinook circling over the DC area for the whole day.
iamaclimber - Feb 26, 2003 7:38 pm
Route Climbed: Dissapointment Cleaver Date Climbed: June 22, 2001This was my second attempt to summit Rainier. My first attempt was one year and one day earlier. I learned a lot from my first time on the mountain. Be in the best physical shape that you can get into before you make an attempt. The better shape you are in then the more fun the climb will be. The first year was with a RMI expedition climb. What I learned on that trip was well worth the expense. This summit was with a friend that was an experienced climber. I was fortunate to have weather good enough to climb in on both my trips. See Alpine Air 2000, and Return to Rainier in my reports section.
tonybell1 - Feb 26, 2003 7:15 pm
Route Climbed: Disappointment Cleaver Date Climbed: July 1981Ash on the mountain from the eruption of Mt. St. Helens.
sskeep - Feb 24, 2003 6:24 pm
Route Climbed: Disapointment Cleaver Date Climbed: July 8, 2001July 7, 2001, Pat, Scott, Steve and I headed out from the Paradise ranger station on a beautiful sunny day and climbed up to Camp Muir arriving around noon. We set up camp and prepared for a midnight push for the summit. The night was crisp and cloudless with a full moon so headlamps were not really needed. With Steve leading the rope team we reached the summit at 7am and only passed one other group of climbers. We spent some time at the summit and there were quite a few larger slow moving teams we passed on the way down. We spent another night at Camp Muir, while most other people packed up and headed off the mountain. The next day Scot skied down the Muir snow field while the rest of use used sitting glissades. Since we planned 5 days for this trip and only used 2 to climb Mt. Rainier we went up and checked out the Ho Rain Forest. This climbing trip couldn’t have been more perfect! Darryl
Zhenya77 - Jan 23, 2003 8:42 pm
Route Climbed: Ingram Direct Route Date Climbed: March 24, 2001Our group of six students from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign decided to spend our Spring break by climbing Mt.Rainier. Once we get to Paradise (5500 ft) we started to hick through a deep snow to Camp Muir. (10000 ft). The last 100 m were quite difficult. The weather was getting worse and with terrible wisibility we could hardly kept ourself from falling at constant 40mil/hour wind gust. After waiting 2 days for good weather we finally made our first attempt to reach the summit by the Gibraltar Ledges. Since we never climbed together. We moved pretty slow. Thus at about half point we decided to turn back. The second attempt was more successful. We started at 12:00 am and chose to go by Ingram Direct Route. It was quite an exhaustive strenuous walk through the deep (some times waist deep) snow. Finally we reached the Summit of Mt. Rainier. The most interesting part was that we also had to walk back to the parking lot and drive to the airport. On the way dow from the camp Muir we got lost in the dark. After camping in the snow we decent early in the morning.
dsnell - Dec 18, 2002 12:46 pm
Route Climbed: Disappointment Clever Date Climbed: July 1995Summited with James A. Harrison, Jr., of Santa Fe, New Mexico. We drove from Albuquerque, NM (24 hours straight), arrived at Paradise in the morning, and made our way to Camp Muir. We left for the summit early the next morning (1 a.m.), tagged it at about 7:00, and made it back down to Muir by noon or so. We hauled butt down to Paradise, drove to Yakima, got a hotel, and slept for about 15 hrs before returning to Albuquerque the next day. It was a very beautiful summit day: no clouds, and no wind. The problem, though, was the crowds: we were in a traffic jam all the way to the summit (this was a weekend). Next time, I'll make sure to go during the middle of the week.
mountaineer17 - Nov 30, 2002 11:15 pm
Route Climbed: Disappointment Cleaver Date Climbed: August 21, 2002Great Climb. Camped at Camp Muir for 1 night and left for the summit at 12:00AM. Enjoyed a calm night. Had alot of trouble with one of my crampons in the bowling alley. I definitely recomment making sure that they fit snuggly the night before. Had to go up to Ingrahm Flats with just one crampon. The Cleaver was not very challenging. Huge crevasses around 13,000 feet opening up right in the middle of the route. Took alot of time to test snow bridges for stability. Definietely recommend taking glacier and crevasse seminar before climbing without a guide. Calm weather at the summit. Enjoyed the entire climb and intend to return to try another route very soon.
Arthur Kerr - Nov 23, 2002 6:53 am
Route Climbed: Disappointment Cleaver Date Climbed: September 7, 2002Coming from sea level I experienced altitude problems when I reached Camp Muir. *$#%@#!! But after resting for a few hours I felt fine when we started for the summit at 2am. Pressure breathing all the way to the top worked wonders and I experienced no ill effects at all. A beautiful mountain. The Cleaver itself was challenging, but not as difficult as I expected after reading some trip reports. I imagine this was because it was dry.
zzril - Nov 22, 2002 12:46 pm
Route Climbed: Emmons direct Date Climbed: August 2000Good conditions and not too many RMI trains to pass. Passed at 14,000 ft. by a North Face R&D team of two Brazilian brothers literally running up the glacier in trail shoes to tag the summit for the second time in as many days. Mutants.
asmrz - Nov 16, 2002 6:54 pm
Route Climbed: Liberty Ridge Date Climbed: July 1-3 , 1985The mountain in 1985 was in 100 year drought and blue with ice. Andy Fried, Robert Somoano and I, climbed the Libery Ridge in the kind of conditions, you would expect to see in September. Blue ice was everywhere, something the three of us from Southern California just couldn't get enough of. We spend three days on the route, mostly because we really had to ice climb the route, it was pretty technical. I made a note to myself after we came down, not to ever wonder why so many climbers from the Northwest US had so much success in the High Mountains. With "training" ground like this, no wonder. This was one beautiful big mountain climb, a line I will never forget.
Dulton - Nov 12, 2002 9:49 pm
Route Climbed: Dissapointment Cleaver Date Climbed: July 17th 2000Stayed at Muir after a long HOT day on the Muir Snowfeild. Left around midnight and proceeded over DIssapointment Cleaver to witness several teams backed up in the Igram Flats area. As we rested on top of the cleaver we watched the sun rise over the Cascades and watching the string of lights still backed up in the Flats. After watching all the teams backed up in the Ingram Flats area and listening to constant rockfall coming from the frock face to the south of the route I descided I would never ascend through that area.
ClimbLer - Nov 7, 2002 2:16 pm
Route Climbed: DC route Date Climbed: 9/26/02After two days at Camp Muir, just bumming around and enjoying the weather we departed around midnight to the light of the full moon. The three of us reached the plateau and Ingraham flats within an hour from Camp Muir. We passed three other teams on the cleaver with minimal rock fall from above. some slmall ice falls on the Danger Traverse below the cleaver. By 1:30 we had gained the cleaver above 11,000 ft. Great weather and clear skies with minimal wind up to about 14,000 ft. reached the crater by 5:30, beautiful sunrise and wonderful decent. I experienced some light-headedness as a result of my frozen camel back hose and thus, dehydration. overall, a beautiful climb.
thenunz - Oct 29, 2002 12:08 pm
Route Climbed: DC Date Climbed: 06/11/1999Had we stayed at Ingram Flats for another hour, we would have witnessed the avalanche that swept two parties off the cleaver., killing one that day. Always climb early!