It took a long time to locate a couple of free days on our respective calendars, but eventually Rob and I managed it. Better late than never. Fortunately, our amazingly sunny summer cooperated with our plans.
Rob and I drove to the Paradise parking lot on a beautiful Friday morning, and the mountain looked great. We were both looking forward to a successful climb, especially Rob who had been weathered off on two previous attempts. For most of the year, this area is inundated by snow, so I wasn’t used to the dry trails and alpine meadows. The Nisqually Glacier was a myriad of dirt-covered crevasses, and what would’ve been a routine walk in the snow a couple of months ago looked impassable now. Our route didn’t take us down onto the Nisqually this time, but its broken-up appearance gave us an impression of what we might be facing further up.
We lounged in the sun for awhile on the helicopter pad at Camp Muir. It was bustling with activity, with all of the guided clients anticipating their bid for the summit. It was much too crowded for Rob and I, so we roped up and climbed 1,000 feet higher to Ingraham Flats. Here, we found ourselves all alone. We retreated into our bivy sacks when the sun disappeared behind Cathedral Rocks, and the temperature dropped substantially.
The glacier ice was infused with years of pumice dust, and our boiled water invariably tasted rather gritty. We looked up at hundreds of feet of exposed rock and loose dirt on Disappointment Cleaver, and we weren’t relishing the thought of having to grind our way through that stuff.
When the alarm went off at 2:00 am, Rob said that he had managed to sleep about 30 times during the night, for about 5 minutes each time. That about summed it up for me too. Despite our best intentions to start early, the long line of two dozen RMI clients passed us before we could get going. Since they stop to rest periodically, however, we eventually managed to get past them.
The Ingraham Glacier, at the base of the Cleaver, was a chaos of sun cups, ice cliffs, and, of course, crevasses. We slowly wound our way through the maze. It was nice to have a marked route to follow through the mess. The Cleaver itself was a big dirt climb, with rocks being kicked loose constantly. At the 13,000 foot level, the route traversed west for a considerable distance to get around the final bergshrund. After that, it was smooth sailing, and we were on the summit by 9:00 am.
The descent was hot, and the rocks that had been frozen in place during the ascent were now tumbling with regularity off the nose of the Cleaver. I looked back at one point to see a large rockslide plummet straight towards a party of guided climbers. They would surely have been overcome had the debris not been funneled down into a crevasse only feet from where they were standing. The guide yelled to the stunned clients, “Don’t stop. Keep moving. Keep moving. Keep moving!”
We eventually descended back into the land of the tourists, and were bombarded by the routine questions, “How far did you go? Did you make it?” Yeah, we made it. Another great adventure.
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