Last weekend (Aug 6-7, 2011), I summited Mt. Rainier through the Emmons glacier. We had the best weather I have seen on the mountain so far, the views as usual were stunning and the company (Melissa, Jim & Heidi) was joyous!  What better way to spend a weekend, yeah? But wait there is more … I was climbing to support the cause of Asha for Education and fund-raise! In addition to our rope team three more Asha team rope teams summited Rainier! Kudos to all the climbers and the cause!

A little bit about the climb..

We started about 4am on Saturday from Seattle. After getting our permits we got to the White pass trail head around 8am. The glacier basin trail has been remarkably improved, thanks to all the trail volunteers. It felt like a highway! We chomped a wrap and called it lunch around 11am just before we started ascending the inter glacier. We got to Camp Schurman after an itchy scramble around 2pm.

Thanks to the rangers we had a shovel available in the snow-cave to fetch some good snow to start the long process of melting liters of water to be consumed! Given the heavy snow conditions this year there was no running water around. After a hot mountain meal and some hot chocolate we headed to bed around 7pm with the pact to do a summit push around mid-night.

    Camping at Camp Schurman

When we woke up around mid-night turned out almost everyone else was also awake. The wide open crevasses and some anticipated jumps had everyone pushing for an early summit attempt. With my relatively dim lamp and Jim leading the rope we were off to the cracks by 12:30am. After long hauls, rest stepping, some crevasse jumps, an amazing sunrise we summit around 8am! The weather was just perfect. Low winds, balmy weather, hot chocolate and wine were order of the day on the summit! Following are some pictures from our lovely ordeal!

       Lovely Sunrise                         Rope team on Summit!                                   Pic with our Asha Team

After spending an hour on the summit we had the more treacherous part of the climb – the descent! Suffice to say, we were not looking forward to the descent, we had jumped some funk stuff which with sun on the head would be quite interesting to maneuver. Thanks to Jim belay and Melissa’s singing we did make it safe to the base camp around 2pm.

Yes, we did jump some crevasses                           Picket Time!                                          Up, close!

Happy to be out of the crevasse zone!

After getting to the camp we took a short nap and started out way down from camp Schurman to the white river trail head around 4:30pm. The Asha team just has started their way down as well. The part from Camp Schurman to inter-glacier with some tricky scrambling and wide exposure was a bit nerve wrecking but once we were on the inter-glacier it was one long nice glissade down to the Glacier basin!!! After rather a long walk and lots of “are we there yet!” we got to the cars around 9pm!

A tiny break…

Earlier this year I wrote a series of pic and poem posts, this climb inspired the one below -

Song for his post is of course – Don’t stop believing.

“Beauty is abound in the beast

Grandeur and godliness make a feast

The terror is tamed with a team

Might seem a lofty goal with a pulse weak

A step at a time makes it real

And a cause to support makes it surreal!”

A little bit about the cause…

I have been volunteering for Asha for Education, Seattle chapter for a few years now! This organization is ranked among top 10 charities in “International/Development and Relief Services” by Charity Navigator. I believe in the cause of education, and through an organization like Asha I was able to help a school for hearing impaired (Mayaboli) raise money for land near my home town in India. If you believe in the cause as well please considering supporting the climb with the any form of donation!

I have been meaning to do a few outdoorsy things this summer, and wanted to started chalking my list here so that friends and family can join in, talk me in to and out of few things -

• Rock-climbing & Bouldering
  • A weekend bouldering trip to Squamish!
  • Climbing as many single-pitch 5.8s as I can. May be pick up Exit-38 Wednesdays!
  • Goal: Outer space (?) (July 2nd week or Aug 2nd week) – Outer space is a six pitch climb near Leavenworth, and it has been my goal since i started cragging a couple of years ago. Given my space and rock-climbing touch, it might not happen this year but still a worthy goal.
• Mountaineering –
  • Mt. Adams (June 19th?)
  • Mt. Baker (June 26th)
  • Mt. Shuskan (?)
  • Goal: Lead a trip up Mt. Rainier (July 17th), may be two
  • Goal: One ice-climb, may be Mt. Hood late in the season (Aug 1st week?)
• Cycling
  • Flying Wheels Summer Century! (June 12th)
  • Goal: Lead a week-long trip along Oregon Coast (week of July 24th), in preparation to India biking adventure.
• Motorcycling
  • Now that i still have my SV650s for this season I would love to do some long riding and track days with it. I have already been eyeing some routes.
  • Goal: Do at-least one long ride and one track day!
• Backpacking
  • Yosemite (?) (Late summer Aug(?))
  • Need suggestions and friends to go with!
• Hiking & Camping
  • Granite Mountain
  • Camp Muir
  • Goal: At-least do one camping trip with friends
• Try a new activity
  • Rafting down Yakima river! (July 4th –?)
  • Sea-kayaking or Sailing
  • Goal: Learn to swim in open water

May be I should make a outdoor activities calendar. Making it public is a little itchy but hey its summer in the northwest!!

 Our Team on the Summit – 14,440 ft!

Maris and Myself at 14,440 ft!

The Team

This climb was part of Olympia Mountaineers club climbs and was led by Colin. Originally we planned on having four rope teams but a few people cancelled on the climb last minute so we had three rope teams of three people each. I wasn’t signed up to be a rope lead but John and Bonnie were gracious enough to let me lead a rope. We planned to hike to the high camp on day 1, do a summit bid starting midnight and come back to high camp and rest for remaining of day 2 and then walk out to cars on day 3.

The Route

The Emmons route compared to the more popular DC route is a little longer and little more technical. I have done the DC route before and I felt that Emmons route showed a little more of the true mountain – lots of crevasses and wind!

Details

Day 1

We started at about 10am from the White river parking lot which is about 4500ft to get to our high camp (Camp Schurman) at about 9500 ft.

I got to lead a rope on this climb, I have been mountaineering for only a few years now and this was my first glacier rope lead. Here is an interesting picture on the first day as we were heading to the Camp Schurman high camp, seems like I’m leading my team to a crevasse – but hey there was a snow bridge there.

We got to Camp Schurman at about 4:00pm and were told by the ranger that no camping spots are available on the rock. For next couple of hours we were digging snow platforms, and finally had our tents set up around 6:30pm.

Day 2

We woke up around midnight to start our climb up on Emmons Glacier. By the time we started (around 1am) there were already a quite a few partied ahead of us. I glitter of head lamps covered the mountain.

We had been informed by the ranger that the route was pretty straight forward expect for one tricky section which has a crevasse on side and a drop off on the other. Here is a picture of that section, while I was coming down it.

At this section – which was about at 11,800ft we spent about an hour and half waiting for other teams to pass, as most of them were putting an anchor before crossing. We were quite a bit concerned because with this lag we were running a quite a bit late, as it was already 5am! and we had about 2500+ ft to go and less than 5 hour before we absolutely need to turn back.

Fortunately, after crossing on top of this serac our three rope teams (Colin’s, Josh’s and Mine) moved reasonably fast and we were at the summit about 9:15 pm. Here is picture of our climb leader Colin leading -

It was very windy on the summit. We paid our homage and dedications quickly and started on the way down at about 10am.

As they say the trip up is the easy part and other half on way down causes most mountaineering accidents! Well we did fairly well on the way down, we got to our high camp at about 2pm! However Mr. V, was a little slower and punched through a crevasse. It was only to be realized later than this punching through Crevasse will cause we some ankle trouble and an ER visit!

After getting to the camp we decided to take a quick nap and food break, pack out tent and be walking down by 4pm. This was slight change in the plan because the original climb plan was to stay as high camp on day 2 and then get back on cars on the next day. However the day 1 night was so windy and stormy at the high camp that no one could sleep. In fact, we were grateful than our 3-season vestibule less tent held in that kind of wind! So in the pursuit of some sleep we left the camp on day 2 itself!

The rest of the way down, as actually eventful! Mr. V successfully managed to get his a slight cut in chin while glissading the inter-glaciers. However, skipping the uncomfortable cut the glissade were fun!!!

So by the time we got to the Glacier basin and started hiking out on the trail, my injured ankle had surfaced itself and grown in to an unbearable pain! With a 60lb pack it was increasingly becoming uncomfortable to walk out. I let Colin (our climb leader) know that and subsequently graciously Bonnie and John stayed with myself and Maris to only re-surface at the trail head in 4 hours, around 9pm! Thanks to Maris for carrying our tent for the test of way and thanks to Colin, John, and Bonnie for keeping us company! We did enjoy the awesome meadows and the views though!

When we re-grouped around 9pm at the parking lot we decided to go for a late dinner in Enumclaw! We feasted in Mazatlan Mexican restaurant and every sip of my Dos Equi helped me relieve the ankle pain. After getting to Capitol hill, I made a late night ER visit and had my ankle checked and chin sealed.

The good news is that nothing is broken (as yet) but there is quite a bit of swelling hiding any other issues. Now the bad news – I don’t know if I will be able to go on our planned Seattle to San Francisco bicycling tour starting this Saturday .

Thanks to Colin, John, Bonnie, Josh, Ted, Chris, Andrew for letting me be part of this climb and thanks to lovely Ms. Maris was getting me on this climb! Colin did a great job leading the climb, it was my pleasure to be in such an awesome company!

Personal

Earlier I got email from Aparajita suggesting like Alok’s Rainier Climb, I should fundraise for Asha. I like Asha’s cause and zero-overhead approach, so please donate for Asha to support my climb. Asha has supported a project in my hometown in India – the Mayaboli school for hearing impaired. For those who know me and would like to personally donate for this cause I would be really happy to receive donations for the same. This is the same school for which I fundraised in my last Rainier climb. Please note unlike the general Asha the donations for Mayaboli are not 509(c)3 and hence not tax deductible.

Mayaboli School For Hearing Impaired

Team Cause
I also want to promote my team HealthVault and have this climb help spread the word about need to improve the state of health care, particularly the need for individual citizens to assert right to Health Data.

Endorse HealthDataRights

To share to your success stories and learn more about what other folks are doing to make themselves an active participant in the Health eco-system – do take a look at http://www.iamenabled.com (please note – this is Microsoft sponsored venture).

Share your stories, join the movement

Image via Wikipedia

So what all did I learn? The one main thing to learn about crampons is what ever you do try to get the most points in. What this implies is if you are coming downhill then do freaking edge (you will trip!), but try to roll your ankle towards the downhill side and get more points in, and better is dont edge at all!

One trick of the trade of secret I learn from Rob is how to position and balance myself. The idea is to swing the tool, hand from it with your wrist and then then move your legs up such that one leg is on either side of the tool. Once you are in balance and have three point of contact just stand up and swing the other tool. This way one doesn’t barn door and uses much of legs.

I over used by hands, had a very tight grip and was very sloppy with my footwork. Well the result is i gotjavascript:void(0) a little sore and ran out of gas much earlier than i expected.

I have a lot to learn, but meanwhile just for shits and giggle check out this nice beginner video on ice climbing. And yep! thanks to Rob for hauling me in and introducing to Ice Climbing!:

The weather was really awesome! We started from the trail head about 11:30am and reached hogsback around 3:30pm, we decided to set our camp (base camp) here since we had running water and roping up and getting up to high camp, melting water + dinner would put us to bed pretty late. By the way the journey to the camp was not as easy – the trail is in a really in bad shape and we had to scramble our way in and walk over thin logs with a 50 pound pack . And Oh! one interesting thing happened, Maris dropped her pole on a shitty slope and i volunteer to go get it. I had to go through some loose gravel and some snow but as soon as i grabbed the pole on of my feet slip and before i realized i was doing a butt ride towards a raging creek . Fortunately i had my ice axe and i could self-arrest in time and make my way up safely!! This was a pretty freaky i think everyone was a little haired up seeing it .

Anyways we started our climb around 2:00am from 5700′. After making our way up the first slope one of the rope mates felt a little weird to after a lot of back and forth Jim (the leader) decided to go back with him. So we were then five folks on one rope 50m rope ! Anyways the weather held great and we were on the summit at about 8:30!! We made our way back down to camp at about noon and headed out from the cars at about 4pm to have the much missed Mexxi-Mamma burger ..

Pictures of the trip are shared here.

The three day trip was a fabulous excursion in the Pacific Northwest’s flora & fauna, tide charts and yep the longest wilderness coastline!! All of these were unparalleled to my any relevant experiences before! I can go on and on about how i loved the coast but i think i’ll leave you guys to enjoy the video for now!

Last season I started leading trad, I learned a lot of composure and mind tricks! Almost everyone can climb 5.8/5.9 but when it comes to leading it all in the mind! While doing a leading harder stuff i learnt from a friend and colleague (Damon) a very cool trick of extending your arms and using your legs. Damon is an awesome climber and when he climbs it almost looks out of a video, also note that most rock climbing books and websites stress on the fact of using your legs and not relying on hands. It was sort of ‘AHA’ moment when Damon showed me how to hang on hands and move your legs up and then stand on a good hold, and keep repeating the same tactic. I wish i had a picture or a video to illustrate. This has helped me a lot, many time i’m just able to cruise up on the juggy 5.10′s without any problem using this technique. Well, no only if I had a cool technigue to negiotiate the tiny handholds i would be a 5.10 champ .

Anyways, to the point this season i’m planning to use this book to first get the 5.10′s and then move on the oh well.. lets see . But from what my friends (Wayne) have told me about the book, it seems to lay out a great process of trying to make training pyramid of grades you can climb to grade you want to achieve, end of the day its all about miles and constant tiny improvements with ‘AHA’ moments inter-spread.. sounds familiar ??

IMG_0008,
originally uploaded by vbha.

Man! memorial weekend was awesome, we went backpacking on the lakeshore trail! More pics at http://www.flickr.com/photos/vaibhavb/tags/backpackinglakechelansummer2007/ the two days of 17.5 was action packed with sightings of mountain lion and rattle snakes. We did make it in time for the ferry back from Stehekin to Fields landing and yep! we did manage to get lunch in Stehekin!. Oh ya !! we also figured out how people in stehekin get their cars!

Well! this isnt exactly detailed but more interesting details coming up, soon!!