photos from our mt rainier climb last week

me, tom (broin law), and jim (father in law)

we watched the sun rise as we came down the mountain. around 4:30 am, we saw this beautiful sunrise. that is tom overlooking a cliff.

a view of mountains as we began our climb up to our base camp - camp muir (10,200 feet)

getting our climbing permits at the ranger station.
we began our hike here at paradise (5400 feet)

getting our gear together before the climb

brandon led the other rope team

i was surprised at how close this marmot let me get. they communicate with noises that sound like whistles. everytime i would whistle, he would look at me and move closer.

my plastic mountaineering boots

tom and jim coming up the mountain on sunday. this was our hike up to camp muir, about a 5 hour hike with 50 pound packs on our backs.

this tent was our home for a couple days

view from camp muir

looking down to the ingraham flats. were at about 11,000 feet here. those crevasses in the ice are HUGE. it's hard to tell from way back here. they are one of the things we had to be the most careful of. often snow will fall and cover the ends of one and as you think your walking across a snowfield, your really walking on a thin bridge of snow. then you can fall into a crevasse that is hundreds of feet deep.

this was the other danger - not getting hit by falling rock when you need to climb a spot that has many rocks above.

jim leading the way

brandon and jim

looking at the summit

jim showed me the route we would take as we waited for the right time to begin our ascent

tom and i

it was dark when we arrived at camp muir. we had to set up camp and get water. to get water, we melted clean snow with our stove and then purified it.

we enjoyed the crystal clear view from camp muir as we waited around on monday morning. it was beautiful to see mt adams, mt hood and mt st helens. i think i sat there looking out over the mountains for about an hour.

getting ready

our camp. yeah yeah, i know... guys are messy.

jim getting into his warmest clothes. we were on the top of the disappointment cleaver (12,500 feet) and about to start our hike for the summit (14,400 feet). this is where it really started to get cold, since the sun was setting and there was nothing to block the wind during this next part.

heres me getting bundled up. it was well below freezing temps with probably a good 40 mph winds up there. all of our water froze into solid ice inside of our nalgenes. even a couple of our cameras totally froze up and wouldn't work. the Lord really blessed us though. He held off the storm that was supposed to hit and gave us beautiful clear skies to see more stars then i have ever seen before. he kept us from really experiencing any altitude sickness at all. i really didn't know how blessed we were til i got back down to camp muir and met many people who had tried 2,3 or even 4 times to summit the mountain and hadn't gotten to yet. so many will develop altitude sickness or have bad weather blow in. what a great trip. thank you jim for leading us to the top of rainier. thank you tom for giving me that snickers bar in my time of need. thank you Jesus for an incredible adventure.