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发帖数: 39815 | 1 Florin Teodorescu, Bartosz Paliswiat and I climbed Mount Rainier via the
hardly travelled Tahoma Glacier, spent the third night on summit and came
down via the popular Disappointment Cleaver route. This easily is the best
climb I have done in my life. During the climb, every day, except for the
last day, things went very differently from what we planned. | T*********e
发帖数: 39815 | 2 Day 1, Friday, 6/13
We registered for the climb at Longmire Information Center shortly after 10:
00am. The climbing ranger told us that there had been no teams reaching the
summit via Tahoma Glacier this season. In fact there were only three teams
that had registered for such a climb. One went on 5/17 and only reached
Emerald Ridge at 6200 feet. The second team went one day ahead of us and we
were the third team.
At 11:00am, we parked our car at fork of the West Side road from the main
road and | T*********e
发帖数: 39815 | 3 Day 2, Saturday, 6/14
After only a few hours of sleep, I was awaken by the alarm at 5:00am. After
getting up, breaking the camp, melting snow for water, boiling hot water for
breakfast, eating and repacking, it wasn’t until 7:30am before we got
going again. We put on the crampons and roped up. I led.
From the camp, it appeared the right hand side of the lower glacier was very
smooth. That would be our route to go. At between 9000 and 10000 feet, we
would traverse across the glacier and got just | T*********e
发帖数: 39815 | 4 Day 3, Sunday, 6/15
As planned, we all woke up at 2:30am. It was still dark. We quickly got
dressed, broke our camp, repacked, roped up and were ready to go. Quick was
a relative term. It still took us nearly two hours to do that. We started to
climb at 4:30am. I led again.
After just a few steps, I knew we were in trouble. Despite the below-
freezing temperature, the snow was not frozen! Later we concluded that it
was because there was heavy snowfall a few days earlier and the freezing
level wa | T*********e
发帖数: 39815 | 5 Day 4, Monday, 6/16
I woke up when it was still dark. I stayed in my sleeping bag and checked my
entire body for any sign of altitude sickness. My mind was obviously clear,
my breathing was quite normal, my heart rate was very high at 96, my head
did not hurt unless I shook it hard. And I was hungry and thirsty. It
appeared I was fine. But I needed to rehydrate badly. Now the most important
thing was to get stove started and melt snow for water.
After lying in the tent for an hour or so, I got u | T*********e
发帖数: 39815 | 6 Lessons learned:
1. Should have taken snowshoes on this trip. It would have saved us a lot of
time on day 2.
2. Always start early. 7:30am start time on day 2 is too late.
3. Leader should have all gears handy when travelling through technical
terrains. I should have carried at least 2 pickets and all ice screws and
the ice hammer with me on day 3 when I led.
Thing went well:
1. Excellent team work. 3 people carry the team on 3 different days.
2. Patience to wait for good weather. I cannot imagi |
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