Inter Glacier, Mt. Rainier

Things just keep getting awesomer!  First, I got to come up to Washington to visit my brother, and now I'm about to start hiking on THE mountain up here: Mt. Rainier, the scariest, most ridiculously daunting looking mountain I have ever seen.

When hiking here, there is a very strong sense that this mountain will do whatever it wants, whenever it wants, whether or not it will affect you.  Like no other mountain I've experienced, this one feels alive.  Rocks fall, glaciers boom, snow melts, flowers grow.  Nothing here stands still.

 We started from the White River campground with the intention of "hiking up the mountain a bit".  Glacier Basin camp is the "official" end of the trail, and we found ourselves here a lot quicker than I expected.

Beyond here, the map they give you at the national park entrance says something like "Here there be monsters."  Eh, whatever, we went for it.  The only monsters I saw were a hairy beast and a mountain goat.  I guess it might be hard to tell which one is which...

We know that Camp Curtis and Camp Schurman are somewhere up the Inter Glacier.  These are the usual overnight camps for people actually headed to the peak.  

Having never been here before, we weren't sure how hard it would be to get there.  When we finally put axe on glacier, we couldn't see ANY tracks from previous hikers or mountaineers.  This wasn't too encouraging, so we proceeded with caution.  Usually, when a "normal" approach to the mountain falls into disuse, I would guess there is a good reason.  Anyway, we crunched on up the mountain.

Lunch happened at about 7,900' or so, with a great view of the White River canyon and the lower pitches of the Inter Glacier. Click here for a link to the panoramic viewer.

Below the firn line, the multi-year old blue ice is really showing.

We hugged the climber's right side of "The Wedge" (the rock feature that contains the Inter Glacier) as we went up, and took to the rocks where the glacier's surface went convex, or where we would have had to strike out on bare ice.  I didn't want to find any crevasses the hard way, and even though we had crampons, I didn't feel risking a fall, you know? Click here for a link to the panoramic viewer.

We topped out at about8,500' after a treacherous scramble to a fantastic viewpoint.  We were definitely below our original goal of Camp Schurman, but you know what?  Who cares!  This place rocks!

We heard sounds like thunder coming out of the Winthrop Glacier.  This thing is alive!

It's also big--really big!  You could drop any number of city busses in each one of those crevasses.

We posed for the traditional 'Merican Flag shot (even though it wasn't the summit), and headed back down.

Sadly, there was no glissading today.  Too bumpy, too icy--maybe next time!  Soon we walked off the toe of the glacier, and back onto the mountaineer's track.

...into the woods...

...past the luxurious restroom facilities...

...and after we got to the car, we tried to spend some time at the Sunrise Visitor's Center.  Apparently, everything turns back into a pumpkin up here on Labor Day, whether or not the weather is beautiful.  Hmm.

Here's an overview of our route on Google Earth.  You can see we did a fair bit of climbing, but there is A LOT of mountain left!

And, here's the usual details...  Normally, I would put in some disclaimer about how the positive and negative slope could never  have been this steep.  Not today.  I'm pretty sure those are real.

If, at this point in this really long post, you are still interested, I stuck together a bunch of video clips from the trip.  Nothing special, but I think it gives you a sense of what it was like to be there.