OK, OK, I’ve been remiss. It’s been about 2 months since I put up my last post, promising more, and I haven’t. BTW, thanks for the guilt trip, Medrawt. (And on a semi-related personal note: I am happy you are not dying. 
)
So, Rainier. I think I let it sit too long. It is beginning to blur into a haze of sky and snow and rock and assorted pointy tools. But I’ll try.
Day 1: Saturday, August 16
The objective for the first day was to hike up to Camp Muir, which sits at about 10,200 feet (Paradise, the starting point, is around 5400). We had gone over our gear with one of the guides the day before, and headed out from the IMG office not *too* early, but still in the morning. Then we loaded up and put our boots on in the mosquito-infested Paradise parking lot (seriously, I had about six bites in the span of five minutes, including one on my FACE), and headed out mid-morning.
By that point, I should mention, it was HOT. Like, over 90. And we were all carrying packs that weighed about 50 lbs, which will make you work up a sweat even when it’s cold out. I did the entire first day in shorts and a t-shirt, and it was rough, especially for the first few miles, hiking in plastic boots on paved, snow-free trail (or worse, stairs). I felt very dehydrated early on, and ended up having to adjust my water ration, such that I had nearly run out by the time we reached snow — but then, reaching snow meant that one of the guides was able to help me melt some more water out of the white stuff. So that worked out.
Plus, the picture-taking was great:
At this point, it was extremely hard to believe that I was going to end up on top of that thing. In fact, it’s still hard to believe, and it happened…
Off in the distance is Mt. Adams, which is where I climbed (and fell) a few weeks before. An update on my injury: turns out, it wasn’t just a flesh wound – it’s also sprained. In fact, it’s still sprained, more than 2 months later. I’m doing physical therapy for it now.
These boots were frigging amazing. After shredding my feet on Adams, I went on a search for rental boots, all over the city (there are a surprising number of places to rent plastic boots in Seattle), and ended up with exactly the same boots I’d been wearing, but half a size up. That, combined with a different lacing technique, kept me all comfy cozy all the way up and down. No blisters at all (unheard of, really), just a little shin-bang.
…
Apart from the heat, the first day wasn’t so bad. Tough, certainly, but just a hike, with some snow, and a lot of weight. No glaciers, so no ropes, and no need for crampons. (On the other hand, that means we were carrying all the rest of our gear – crampons are damned heavy!) The Muir Snowfield was getting pretty icy (just kind of that time of the season), and there were a lot of contenders for the Darwin Awards slip-sliding down in jeans, some actually sledding on pieces of cardboard or something. Lunatics, I tell you.
At Muir, IMG has a Weatherport, where the guides sleep and cook our meals (yes, we got cooked meals – burritos the first night, cheesy broccoli chicken the second night), and also a reserved space in one of the shelters, which they share with Alpine Ascents. Muir’s really kind of a strange place, in a cool way. It’s like this little village of shacks, some put up by guide services, some by NPS, surrounding a helipad, and then over the ridge, there’s a tent city of self-guided climbing groups and the guide service weatherports. We got to sleep in one of the shacks, on hard wooden bunks three levels high. I was lucky enough to get a bunk near the sole window – it got pretty hot in there at night – but I felt somewhat less lucky when I got rained on through said window. Oh well – it’s not like any of us were sleeping really well that night anyway.
Which reminds me, I skipped a part. The plan for our trip was:
Day 1: Hike up to Muir.
Day 2: Wake up relatively late, eat breakfast, practice with our crampons and ice axes, and then hike up to Ingraham Flats, a short 2-hour hike over Cathedral Gap, at about 11,100 feet, then relax for the rest of the day in preparation for summit day.
Day 3: Do an alpine start (get up at about 1 am), summit the mountain and go all the way back down to Paradise.
Yeah, that was the plan. The weather didn’t really cooperate though. After a summer of totally bluebird weekends – no weather concerns at all for months – we happened to go up in the face of a storm system. So after dinner on Saturday, our lead guide, Eric, gathered us for a chat. After evaluating the options, the guides were recommending that we make our summit attempt on Sunday instead of Monday – the next day, at that point. All of our jaws dropped a little, but he went on. It seemed like Sunday would bring rain, and maybe thunderstorms, but Monday would have all that plus 50 mph winds. Sunday sounds better, right? Nodding all around. So we had a new plan:
Day 2: Get up at about 7. Eat breakfast, do the roping/arrest training. Hike up to Ingraham Flats by 11 or 12. Rest an hour in the tents (which were pre-set up there), and drop overnight gear. Set out to make the attempt on the summit as a “sunset climb” – kind of a beautiful thing where you get the whole upper mountain to yourself (everyone else climbs in the morning) and you get to see the sunset from 12,000 feet. Return to Ingraham Flats around nightfall (about 9 or 9:30 pm at that time of year), stay the night there.
Day 3: Get up at about 7 again. Eat breakfast. Load up, hike out to Paradise.
As startling as it was to have the plan changed in mid-climb, this honestly sounded pretty good to all of us – for one thing, we never had to do an alpine start! No climbing Disappointment Cleaver in the dark!
Still, it did make it spectacularly hard to sleep that night. Soooo many nerves, combined with adrenaline, altitude, and a very hard pallet… I think I was among the best sleepers (as in, I got some), but it was touch and go.
Also, I should mention: my uncle, who got me into this whole thing, was a frigging rock star. 60 years old, lives in a region with no mountains, hardly trained at all, and he just plowed right on up the mountain – and carrying a practically antique external-frame pack, no less! I know he felt the challenge, but he was much less wussy about it than I was, particularly on the way up. In fact, it became kind of a group joke that he always had his pack on before anyone else at the end of each break – the guides would all be like, “[Uncle's name]! Sit down! No pack until I’ve got mine on!” This (of all things!) was the first thing he and I had ever done together with just the two of us (he’s married-in, to my mother’s sister), and it was really great to get to share it with him.
…
So, any bets on when – or whether – I’ll post Day 2? 
I’m giving myself license to post some other stuff between. A lot has actually been going on in my life, particularly since the quarter started… and none of it has to do with mountains at all!
For now, I’ll leave you with a few shots from the first night, at Camp Muir:
The tent city. The public shelter is off to the right, behind the three shacks that are most visible.
Our shelter was right behind the one with the yellow thing on top of it from here. This picture was taken near the IMG Weatherport, looking back toward Paradise.
