Mount Rainier Ascent - Emmons Glacier

July 26-27, 2014

Just a couple of weekends ago, a small group of friends and I summited Mount Rainier. It was epic. This is our story.

Summit Team

Annie Frederick
Dan Kuchan
Erica Bliss
Hexar Anderson

Team Pineapple Express reporting for duty!

Route

The most common route to the summit of Mount Rainier is called the Disappointment Cleaver, which starts at Camp Paradise (5500’) on the south side of the mountain and requires you to hike up 4500 feet of elevation gain to Camp Muir (10,080’) or Ingraham Flats and then make your summit attempt via a rock feature called the Disappointment Cleaver to the top at 14,411 feet. The total elevation gain is 9000 feet, and most people do it over three days (or more). It is generally considered to be the easiest way to the summit of Mount Rainier.

We are apparently gluttons for punishment, because we didn’t do that. Instead, we opted for the Emmons Glacier route, which starts at the White River Campgrounds (4400’) on the northeast side of the mountain. It starts with a three-mile dirt trail that leads you into the Glacier Basin (6000’), a somewhat rocky but mostly flat area below the Interglacier. From there you ascend the Interglacier approximately 3200 feet until you reach the ridgeline just below Steamboat Prow (9200’). Next you descend a rocky section down to the Emmons Glacier, and then traverse over the Camp Schurman (9450’). From Camp Schurman, the route takes you up the Emmons Glacier, typically via “The Corridor”, then traversing right across the Alpine Meadow, and then around the bergschrund just below the summit at Columbia Crest.

Approximate route path topo

Approximate route as seen from Camp Curtis

Day 1 – White River to Schurman

I woke up to my alarm at 4am and left my apartment by 4:30am in order to meet two friends at the Kent P&R at 5:15am, then Enumclaw at 6am. We reached White River Campgrounds by 7am, and started hiking the trail with heavy packs (approximately 35 lbs) at 7:30am. It took us about one-and-a-half to two hours to reach the Glacier Basin after three miles of hiking and 1600 feet of elevation gain.

We hiked across the Glacier Basin, which is a somewhat rocky but mostly flat area below the Interglacier. This probably took us around an hour, and had some stunning views.

The view from the Glacier Basin

From there we started ascending the Interglacier. It was definitely slow going despite trekking poles and a pretty clear boot path, but we ascended 3200 feet in probably around four hours, arriving at the ridgeline just below Steamboat prow around 2:30pm.

Hiking the Interglacier

Camp Curtis on the ridgeline between Interglacier and Emmons

Little Tahoma and some awesome crevasses on the Emmons Glacier

Intimidating.

After taking in the stunning view of the Emmons Glacier, Little Tahoma, and the summit of Rainier itself, we scrambled down a short rocky hike to the Emmons Glacier, roped up, and traversed over to Camp Schurman to set camp. We even brought a gift for the rangers, a pineapple!

Camp Schurman

Summit view from camp

After several hours spent setting up camp, boiling water, and cooking dinner, we finally went to bed around 6:30pm. It was a tad difficult to sleep given it was still light out until 9pm or so, as well as some noise from other climbers in the area, but we got at least a couple hours of sleep until...

Day 2 – Schurman to Summit

The alarm on my phone went off promptly at 11pm. I was happy to realize that I’d actually been asleep, for at least a couple hours, but also couldn’t help but think to myself, “Mountaineers are f***ing crazy.” After some groaning amongst our team, we started putting our layers on, followed by boots and crampons, then harnesses. We roped up and were finally ready to move at midnight, and started heading up to Emmons Flat with nothing but our headlamps to see with as it was a new moon that night.

Fortunately, there was already a line of headlamps heading up and climber’s left past Emmons Flat to The Corridor, a long section of Emmons Glacier that is relatively free from crevasses. We moved up at a methodical pace, separated from each other by about 30 feet on our 40 meter glacier rope, crampons crunching quietly in the snow. There was a pretty good boot path all the way up the Corridor, so we didn’t have to kick any steps, thankfully.

What hiking in the dark looks like

Once we reached about 12,000 feet, we followed the other climbers traversing right and encountered our first scary crevasse crossing via a snow bridge. It wasn’t actually all that bad, but in the dark it looked pretty spooky and we tried to keep our collective cool as we made it across. Once we did, we breathed a collective sigh of relief, and we could see the line of headlamps again above us, and this was the moment when I realized that we would probably make it all the way after all. We continued to follow the long line of headlamps above.

Around 5:15am, the sun finally started to light our path. It hadn’t risen yet, but the light from the horizon east of us started glowing bright like sunfire. I had gotten pretty cold by this point, due mostly to the wind I think, so I was pretty excited about the possibility of the sun warming us a bit. Not long after, we took a short break at a flat spot at 13,000 feet for food and water, then continued following the other rope teams up the “alpine meadow”.

Sunrise! So much for the alpenglow.

Once we reached about 14,000 feet, we encountered the bergschrund. A bergschrund is a large crevasse that forms where a moving glacier ice separates from the fixed ice or firn above. In this case it was the bergschrund right below the summit cap. We traversed pretty far right near the Liberty Saddle and encountered a relatively small but deep crevasse that we sort of had to step / hop over in order to make it onto the final approach section. This was pretty scary, but we all made it up and continued on for the final push.

Liberty Ridge

The last 400 feet are by far the hardest. It’s amazing how significantly the elevation impacts your ability to breathe and make forward progress; at 14,000 feet even walking feels hard, but here we were continuing to hike up a mountain. On the other hand, I was surprised to find that for nearly the entire hike up from Schurman, I felt pretty fresh and full of energy, and didn’t feel all that tired aside from realizing that my heart rate was pretty elevated during most of the climb. However, past 13,000 feet I definitely started feeling a bit lightheaded, and even more so during the final push.

Annie and I definitely both got summit fever during that last 400 feet, because we could pretty clearly see that we were almost there. We pushed on and reached Columbia Crest, then traversed over to the “true” summit, reaching it by 8am after 8 hours of hiking. We were pretty exhausted but also pretty stoked, so we took a bunch of summit photos and even had a friend take us a summit dance party video. Hooray!

Success! Team Pineapple Express FTW!

Sun's out, guns out!!

Summit beer never tasted so good.

Day 2 – Summit to Schurman

After approximately an hour at the summit hanging out, drinking a Rainier, signing the logbook, etc., we decided that we’d better start descending because none of us felt particularly good. I think we all figured by now we had some kind of altitude sickness happening, and I started to get a headache. I figured I would probably feel better after descending at least 1000 feet or more, so I really wanted to get out of there. We left the summit around 9:30am.

When we encountered the crevasse again, this time instead of stepping up and using the ice ax for leverage, we jumped it on the way down. This was pretty funny and kind of reminded me of the dwarf-tossing scene in Lord of the Rings. We continued climber’s left and gawked at the huge cornices and crevasses under the bergschrund.

Sketchy crevasse jumping! This was actually super deep and pretty scary going up.

Unfortunately, as we descended, my headache only got worse. And what’s more, Annie started to get some pretty intense knee pain as well. Fortunately, Dan had a knee brace that we lent to Annie, and we switched up the rope team so that Annie was leading, and this seemed to help a lot.

Ironically, while I felt great and fresh on the way up, on the way down I felt completely horrible. My headache kept getting worse and it felt like a painful annoying slog stepping down for hours. I must have been pretty tired, but I was also completely miserable due to my headache. It was also pretty challenging trying to not step on the rope with our crampons on, and the snow had softened into a more slushy slippery surface, so we all fell down a bunch, but ultimately after about five hours we reached our tent at Camp Schurman at about 2:30pm.

Schurman to White River

We decided it would be wise to take a one-hour nap at camp, considering how awful we all felt and the fact that we’d had no more than four hours of sleep on Saturday evening, and thankfully we all passed out in the tent almost immediately. The alarm went off at 4pm and we started breaking down camp, which took us about an hour.

It took us only about half an hour to reach the ridgeline at Camp Curtis. The Interglacier seemed a bit melted out compared to just the day before, but we found some really nice glissade chutes on the way down (carefully avoiding the um.. crevasses on the way), and got down it in under an hour. Unfortunately, when we finally reached the trail from the Glacier Basin to White River, we still had three miles to go and it took us another one-and-a-half painstaking hours of drudgery. But we did finally make it to the car around 9pm.

Glissading down the Interglacier.

Unfortunately… Erica’s car had a flat. Between replacing it with her spare and the traffic we ran into between Enumclaw and Auburn due to a concert getting out at the White River Amphitheatre, it took pretty much forever to get home. I was so exhausted, my body was so sore, and I just wanted to be home. You should have heard me whining. In any case, when I did finally get home, I crawled into my bed at around 1:30am on Sunday night and honestly nearly cried from gratitude that my day was finally over. After all, not counting the nap, I’d been awake more than 26 hours, 17 of which were spent ascending or descending. How’s that for crazy?

Overall Stats

Total Elevation Gain: 10,000 feet
Approximate roundtrip distance: 18 miles?
Time spent ascending: 16 hours
Time spent descending: 9 hours
Sleep: 5 hours or less, including nap

Detailed Timeline

Saturday

7:30am – Left White River Campgrounds trailhead for Glacier Basin (4400’)
9am – Reached Glacier Basin Campground (6000’)
11am – Reached the bottom of the Interglacier (6800’)
1:30pm – Reached Camp Curtis (9200’)
3:30pm – Arrived at Camp Schurman (9450’) and started setting up camp, boiling water, etc.
6:30pm – Got in sleeping bags and attempted to fall asleep (with mixed results)

Sunday

11pm (Saturday) – Woke up, started getting ready (9450')
12am – Roped up and started heading up the Emmons Glacier towards The Corridor in the dark (new moon!)
5:15am – Sun finally came out (13,000'?)
8am – Summitted!! Took photos, took dance video, drank a Rainier, signed the logbook, etc. (14,411')
9:25am – Started heading back down to camp
2:30pm – Got back to Camp Schurman (9450')
2:45pm – Quick nap
4pm – Got up and started packing up camp
5pm – Left camp
7:30pm – Reached Glacier Basin trail (6000')
9pm – Arrived at car (4400')
9:30pm – Fixed flat tire
10pm – Left White River Campgrounds
1:30am – Reached my house finally (236')

Trip Highlights

• Excellent weather!!
• Erica brought a pineapple to Camp Schurman to attempt to bribe the rangers into letting us camp there instead of Emmons Flat (successful)
• Several somewhat sketchy snow bridge crossings across crevasses
• Actually had to “jump” a crevasse to make it onto the final summit section (!)
• Ran into someone we knew at the summit (who took some photos and a video of us)
• Rainier (beer) apparently tastes delicious at 14,000 feet
• Fairly awesome set of glissade chutes down the Interglacier (no match for Little T though)

Not-so-highlights

• A bit difficult to sleep at Shurman due to light and noise
• I had an epic headache pretty much from the time we left the summit until we reached Camp Schurman
• Annie’s knee started hurting her on the summit descent as well
• The hike out from the bottom of the Interglacier to White River took FOREVER
• Flat tire once we reached the car
• Was awake for nearly 26 hours the second day
• Entire body was sore for several days after the trip

Other Comments

• 2-day ascent was pretty rough given not much time to sleep or acclimate to elevation
• Crevasses blocked parts of the typical route but the boot path was pretty obvious
• The ranger station apparently gave out unlimited wilderness permits so it was super crowded on the way up – mixed blessing as it made routefinding easier but slowed us down in parts waiting for other rope teams