Mt Adams 7/17 - 7/18/10

I haven’t climbed a mountain since my basic mountaineering class ended. I did fit in a couple of hikes over the past month and a half, but nothing too serious. I found myself in Seattle with a free weekend for the first time in 6 weeks so when the opportunity presented itself to climb Mt Adams, I jumped at it. It was a good group going up with a margarita mania theme, how could I pass that up? Unfortunately, not only have I not been climbing mountains, I haven’t really been active much in the past month and a half so I am terribly out of shape. Mt Adams would definitely challenge me not only on my lack of conditioning, but I was anxious to see how the altitude would also affect me.

The plans came together in the couple days prior to our climb. I was planning to ride down in the late car with Meredith and Stephen. We thought leaving at 7 PM would help us avoid traffic, we were wrong. Tacoma was terrible and we couldn’t understand why on a Friday night traffic was so bad. We finally made our way to the ranger station about 12:30 AM so that we could register and get our climbing permits. When we pulled into the parking lot there was already a big group signing in. There were no fee envelopes left (and no blue bags) and there was a huge stack of registration forms. It looked like we would have quite the company on the mountain that weekend. Meredith used her origami skills to make an envelope to put our money in, and since there were no tags for our pack, she took a picture of us with money and registration form in hand as our proof of payment.

We continued on the gravel forest service road to reach the trailhead and set up camp for the night. There were cars everywhere and the road near the trailhead is a bit of a maze. Meredith found a great bush to park in and we found some empty space nearby so we could put the tent up and get to bed. I think we went to sleep about 1:30 AM with my alarm set for 7:45 AM the next morning so we could get up and meet the rest of the group. We found the group in the morning and after distributing the gear, hit the trail about 9:30 AM. Meredith had her scale so my pack weighed in at about 32 lbs, not too bad. I really need to get one of those scales myself.

It was forecasted to be a really nice weekend – sunshine and warm temperatures. That combination always makes it difficult for me; do I choose to wear light clothing to stay cool and risk exposing more skin to the sun, or protect myself against the sun by covering as much skin as possible? I chose the sun protection route and started off on the hike with the lightest clothes I could find to cover my skin. I was doing fairly well and then all of a sudden I felt really sick and I had to stop and sit for a while. We were just a little above 6,000’ so I shouldn’t have been experiencing any altitude related things. I attributed it to the heat and decided to shed some clothing and slather myself with sunscreen. I continued on, slow going and really feeling quite terrible. Luckily Stephen and Meredith were hanging back and keeping an eye on me. I took a longer break when reaching a shady spot again and they were nice enough to take some of my load to help me out. I was relatively close to the cars so I kept debating whether or not I should turn around but I was hoping I could climb through it and feel better.

The group was stopped at a large group of rocks, waiting for us to catch up. We took a break, grabbed some food, and continued on to tackle a 1,000’ section up to the next ridge. As we climbed up, we were treated to some awesome views of Mt St Helens, Mt Hood, and the summit. I started out slow and just kept a steady pace going up. Yash and I finally reached the next group of rocks where the group was waiting. There were a ton of people hiking up the same steps we came up, so we decided it best to let the group split up so that the strong climbers could reach Lunch Counter, our camp destination, and grab spots before they were all gone. Yash and I hung back a little longer before continuing the climb up. At this point we had just under 1,000’ before we got to Lunch Counter. There was a ridge looming above us that we were really hoping was our destination, but my GPS only showed about 9,000’ and I thought Lunch Counter was at 9,400’. Every little ridge we came to we were hopeful to see a sea of tents but we were continually disappointed. We finally arrived at Lunch Counter, evidence by the relatively flat, wide open space at the base of the next section up to Pikers Peak. We took a left around some rocks and didn’t see our tents. We walked around a little further and were thrilled to see our group, already sitting at the snow bar.

The tents were set up, the bar was dug out, and the first round of margaritas were already poured by time I got to camp. I dropped my stuff and joined the group, glad to have reached our destination for the day. We camped at 9,300’, higher than I had ever been before. Other than a little exhaustion, I wasn’t feeling too bad either. Sam was the bartender for the night diligently using the hand crank blender, her awesome find on craigslist. There was salsa and sombreros, a festive scene at 9,300’. From camp we had an awesome view of Mt Hood in Oregon. Beyond that we also saw Mt Jefferson, and faintly in the distance, the Three Sisters. We finally got the stoves out and started melting snow for water as well as cooking. I had stopped at REI (surprise, surprise) and picked up a single serving of Chicken and Rice from Mountain House, their pro-pack series. It was surprisingly tasty, I’ll definitely have to get more of that in the future. The smaller serving was also nice, I almost finished the whole thing. It was fun hanging out in camp and relaxing, a little different atmosphere than the class outings. We were trying to wait for sunset, and we did get to see some nice colors cast out across the mountains, but we went to bed around 9 or 9:30 PM.

I think I slept the best I ever had on a mountain and was feeling good in the morning, ready for a summit push. Meredith, Yash, and I were all going to start early since we were the slower movers. We left camp about 7:30 AM and donned our crampons at the base of the 2,000’ section. The snow had definitely hardened over night. We were making our way up at a pretty decent pace and I was still feeling pretty good. Right before our second break things started catching up with me. I started slowing down and felt pretty bad. I took off my long johns, looked up and saw the rest of our group. They had already caught up with us. I started out moving slowly again, my goal was Pikers Peak, the false summit at 11,500’. I was ecstatic when I reached 10,700’ – the height of Mt Baker, a mountain that has also defeated me for the time being. The group slowly pulled away from me and I slowed down a bit, taking a few more breaks. Breathing was hard so I welcomed the breaks to help settle myself. I finally reached Pikers Peak and fell down into the snow, happy to have reached my goal. I was higher than every mountain in Washington, except for Mt Rainier (14,410’) and the summit of Mt Adams (12,276’). I had seen Yash, the last of the group, reach Pikers Peak some time before me so I didn’t think I’d have time to reach the summit. Instead I decided to wait at Pikers Peak for the group to come down from the summit and head back to camp with them.

I think my lungs were happy with my decision, although as time passed and I started to recover, I began questioning my decision not to push to the summit. It was about 700’ above me but I didn’t think I could move fast enough for the group. I did take a few pictures of Mt St Helens, Mt Hood, and the summit while I waited. It was really windy there so I bundled up. Finally Sean passed me, on a mission to get to camp. Soon after him Niki, Kerry, Sam, and Shadle appeared so I decided to glissade down with them. Mt Adams is known for its awesome glissades, 2,000’ down from Pikers Peak to Lunch Counter. I had heard a couple talking about their Mt Adams summit the previous week (they were training for Mt Rainier), and they said it had taken them 6 hours to reach the summit from Lunch Counter and only 40 minutes to descend back down. Glissading = awesome! Back at camp we packed everything up and all enjoyed one last margarita. We didn’t want to carry anything we didn’t have to back down the mountain. We had a little bit of tequila left so right before we headed down, we each took a shot; a little something extra to make the climb back down more fun.

Shadle was a champ at finding the glissade chutes and before long, we had descended another 2,000’ in about 30 minutes. We were making good time down the mountain and were all in good spirits, partially thanks to our group margarita breaks. We finally reach the end of the snow and had another mile or so out on the dirt trail. Just as I was beginning to think I missed a turn, I spotted the cars. We made it back, changed into some clean cotton clothing, and started the long drive back to Seattle via forest service road 23. The road was very curvy and bumpy so I had a good challenge in the back seat of trying to focus on things or ‘sleep’ so that the motion sickness wouldn’t get the best of me. I was counting down the miles until we reached highway 12 and some straighter roads. We found a nice little Mexican restaurant for dinner, a great end to our margarita mania weekend.