Picture My World

Mt. Rainier

Originally uploaded by JZip.

I woke up on Sunday just before 6 am to get ready for my ride at 7. It looked like Vancouver was in for a beautiful, clear day so I had high hopes for our climb.

Our plan was to climb up to 9,000′ or 10,000′ on the first day and camp. The second day would take us over glacier to a second camp at 11,100′. We’d then climb to the summit on the third day followed by a descent all the way back to the parking lot. This three day plan would give us some extra time to acclimate to the altitude.

The drive south was uneventful, but the weather turned overcast as we drove through Seattle. It didn’t improve the rest of the way to Mt. Rainier.

We arrived at the visitors’ centre around 12:30, commented on the poor visibility and rain, had lunch, and looked for our two guides, Brian and Keith. We found them after 15 minutes or so and proceeded to bring all our gear up to the centre to distribute the food and the technical equipment Brian and Keith had brought for us. The centre is ringed by a covered area which was perfect for this sort of activity.

At the same time, the guides checked the forcast and came back with some bad news. It appeared the weather had deteriorated since the morning’s 5:30 am weather report and we were in for a very wet evening. They suggested we spend the night at the nearby lodge since slogging up the mountain and pitching a wet camp wasn’t going to be fun.

This was very disheartening news. I had watched the weather forcast improve over the last few days and I was very disappointed at this delay. It could easily turn into an outright cancellation and the thought left me dejected after all the preparation (in the form of money and time).

We got a room at the Paradise Inn and went for a walk through beautiful sub-alpine meadows. We saw an amazing variety of flowers, water falls (both close and far), and deer. We also got rained on a bit.

Afterwards, we cooked up our first night’s camp-food dinner with the aid of some hot water from the snack bar. After dinner 3 of us went out to daven minchah. God must have heard us because the sky opened up and Rainier showed itself. (OK, OK, so it was either God or an incorrect weather man.)

I went inside to grab my camera, snapped some shots, and headed back to go to bed. We agreed on a 5 am wakeup followed by breakfast and a climb to Camp Muir at 10,000′. My disappointment turned to excitement and I had trouble sleeping.

Stay tuned for part 2.

This entry was posted on Saturday, July 16th, 2005 at 10:41 pm and is filed under General, Photography. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.