Camp Muir #2
The end of June arrived as did our last official training hike for the climb, another day trekking up to Camp Muir from Paradise and back. Our original training schedule had some night training planned for last Saturday night to go over rope team travel and ice axe usage, but due to the lack of snow pack at the lower elevations around Paradise it was unfortunately replaced by a basic info meeting at Paradise Inn. Since the night training was already planned for well before they cancelled it during the middle of last week, Jason and I had already booked our hotel to stay in Ashford Saturday night since we had the Camp Muir hike the following day. Staying nearby in Ashford meant that we didn’t have to make that long drive all the way to Rainier again before the hike Sunday morning, which was definitely a nice change.
As has been the case much of this past Spring, temperatures have been pretty warm across the region and Sunday was no different, except for being in the midst of an extended heat wave. It was forecasted to be near 90 degrees Sunday in Seattle and I was hoping that we’d see a little relief being in the mountains. I was wrong. Leaving the hotel for the hour-long drive to Paradise it was already in the mid to upper 70s and fairly muggy. By the time we arrive to Paradise it was miserable — mostly sunny, temperatures around 80 degrees, muggy and little to no wind. All of us were dreading the hike we were about to embark on.
As usual, we got ready, collected our gear, smeared on the sunscreen and departed Paradise just before 9am. The first mile was miserable. Not only is that the worst part of the entire hike because it’s immediately steep and mostly on the paved trail, but the heat and sun just made it that much worse. Good thing most of us brought extra water because we were going to need it.
Fortunately by the time we got to above 6,500 ft it finally began to cool off, a high layer of clouds had moved in and there was a little bit more of a breeze. The snow level was still right below Pebble Creek, mostly at 7,000 feet and above. However, the landscape changes have become less and less dramatic between training hikes compared to May when snow melt was considerably quicker. I’d assume that the amount of snow pack we had on this training hike will be about the same for our official summit climb in three weeks. Though with the current heat wave that looks to be fairly length, I wouldn’t bet on not having more substantial snow melt between now and then.
The pace for this hike was slightly faster than the last one, and I felt like I was struggling a little more this go around. In fact, it appeared that more people struggled this time than last, some of which was likely due to the fact it was so warm, especially when departing Paradise earlier that morning. Let’s hope that’s the case at least. We definitely were not as organized on our ascent this time as we ended up getting broken up into at least three or four separate groups due to some having to take additional breaks to deal with blisters or physical exhaustion.
With the quicker pace, we made it to Camp Muir just before 2pm, 4.5 hours from Paradise. Our last hike to Muir took right at 5 hours, so the faster pace was nice considering our RMI guides go at a pace that will get us from Paradise to Muir in 5 hours. At Muir pretty much all of the snow cover on the ridge that was there last time had melted, exposing a rocky divider between the Muir Snowfield and the Cowlitz Glacier. It was still pretty warm and mostly cloudy, but luckily not nearly as warm or sunny as we had feared when we were at Paradise earlier in the morning.
Our lunch break at Muir was the usual 30 minutes, and then we all headed back down to Paradise. And once again the Muir Snowfield was the most pleasant part of the trip as we made excellent time descending the snow-covered slopes. The trip back down is usually about half that for the ascent, so we arrived back to Paradise by around 5-5:30p. Many of us stopped by the Whittaker’s Bar + Grill once again for cold beers and food before making the 2-hour drive back to Seattle once again.
Although this was the last of our official training hikes, I feel that after the little bit of mental struggling I endured this time that I need to fit in one more challenging training hike before being as ready as I’d like for our climb date in 2.5 weeks. I have my eyes set for potentially another Muir hike or even Mt Si since it’s closer for next weekend, and then hopefully we’ll be ready for the summit.
