Mt Adams : A reflection

Or How I went to Climb a Mountain

I spent the first 12 years of my life in Missouri, the Midwest where the land is flat and a small hill is made a mountain of. At 12 on the brink of becoming we moved back to Utah, the place I was born. I used to walk to school everyday and I remember the awe of the mountains that rose around the small valley I lived in. They surrounded me and yet I rarely ventured into them as a teenager, being in a stage of 80s self discovery and angst. I do recall one day a desire to "climb a mountain" and I had a friend drop me off at the foot of Blacksmith Fork and I just started walking up the mountain. Utah landscape is dry and full of sagebrush and I used vegetation handholds to make my way up. My sense then was that mountains are so much bigger close up than they appear from a distance. And somewhere near the top of some ridge I stopped. I have some vague recollection of a view and my legs hurting, but nothing striking. Then came my 20s and I did nothing physically exerting. In my 30s, as I became bloated, I started to try and get out and exercise. I still recall that first day riding my bike on the trail in California, leaning over the side of the bike and dry heaving, having pushed myself too far. From there one thing lead to another; I discovered Briones and hiking and started walking up hills again. Our move to Seattle put me in touch with the best kept secret of Washington : The Cascades. All the amazing outdoor landscape that surrounds me in such proximity and the journey continued.

Eventually I have found myself exploring the edges of more challenging experiences, backpacking and some dabbling in mountaineering. I met Seth via Flickr and we started hiking, and eventually talked of a Rainier attempt, that never happened in 2006, but I started my journey of firsts. Small steps, like the first time out in the snow with an ice ax, or the roping up for the first time. And then the first weekend of June 2007, Dean, Seth and myself had a go at Mt. Adams, one of the volcanoes in the Cascade Range. Described as a non-technical climb, this refers to the fact that there are no crevasses, and you don't need to wear harness's and rope up, as you would on say other volcanoes, such as Mt. Baker or Rainier. However the mountain is not to be underestimated, as it is the second highest in the state of Washington after Rainier, rising to a height of 12,277 ft with a clear prominence of 8,116 ft. The trail head for the South Climb 183 at Cold Springs campground is at 5600 ft, which is a 6600 ft trek. Depending on the season, the logging road to Cold Springs can be impassable due to snow.

Dean and I drove down in separate vehicles, but left around the same time, he in my Honda, which got better gas mileage than his truck, and me with the family. We got away an hour later than we wanted to and after meeting at Seth's house in Vancouver we got away even later as it took a while to get everything together and get off. We arrived at the ranger station at Trout Lake to register, pay our climbing fee and pick up our free "blue bag" for disposing of human waste, which we all prayed would not be required, Seth taking Immodium to ensure it! We started up the logging road in Seth's new Forester and came to the first big snow patch, another couple we had seen at the ranger station were pulling over. Seeing the clear road beyond, we decided to attempt busting through. We made it and were able to get another 3/4 of a mile up the road before having to pull off. Gearing up, we lathered ourselves in sunscreen and headed up the logging road at 4:48 pm, in 12 hours we'd be setting out again for the summit, but for now the days task was making it to Lunch Counter, 4500 vertical feet away.

The weather was warm and yet high clouds robbed the blue sky of its color. The road was mostly clear with with small patches of snow. When we arrived at trail head at Cold Creek (5600 feet) the trail had a few clear patches, but from there out was snow. The snow was soft and made steady progress difficult by providing no solid traction. I opted to carry my heavy D70 in my hand instead of using my trekking poles. (I find I am much more liable to take photos if I have easy access. Sometimes I hang it from my chest strap). This was a mistake, as poles take around 20-25 % of load off your legs. By the early evening my calves were aching (and they almost never ache any more) and my hands were swelling from dangling as we gained altitude. I switched to poles and things improved.

The route up is pretty self evident: head up the snow fields for the big bluff of rock (Lunch Counter) and avoid the rock fields, a morass of crumbly basalt. Due to our late start we were running out of daylight, Seth was on his third wind, we clearly weren't going to make Lunch Counter. We were in a gully a 1000 feet below our desired destination, a ridge of rock was on our right. We decided to head straight up, pop over the ridge and hope for a flat location. I was by this point a bit anxious, because one of my unstated desires was to witness the sunset from high camp, and the day was deteriorating to the point we'd missed most of it. That final hour of dusk was spent in the gullys and I could imagine that I was missing it all just over the unseen horizon. Dean scrambled up over the rock and yelled down to Seth and I that there was a perfect level spot to camp. Seth and I tromped our way to the top where I was stuck by the beauty of an amazing low dusk sunset framed behind Mt. St. Helens. I dropped my pack, pulled out the tripod and set up the camera to capture a few photos. Then stumbled over to camp as the last of the light faded and the first evening star appeared.

The first order of business was to get some water boiling for dinner. I'd packed that morning in a rush, and hadn't had time to plan a meal, so we'd stopped in Hood River to buy a dehydrated meal. I'd picked out lasagna with beef and it could have been how hungry I was but it tasted damn good. Then to setup camp. Someone long ago had built 3 walls (to protect from wind most likely) and there was a flat area big enough for our three bivy sacks. The night was quite warm, my watch read 70 degrees in the morning inside my sack but outside my sleeping bag. Before retiring Seth indicated that he was spent and wouldn't be considering trying to go for the summit tomorrow. He'd only had 4 hours of sleep the night before and done very little physical activity for a couple of months due to work. Dean wanted to get to at least Lunch Counter as a reconnaissance for his trip at the end of June with his scout troop. So we agreed to wake at 4 am, a scant 5 hours away, and head up for the summit. I'd brought a book along, but fell asleep almost instantly.

I had set two alarms on my watch, one for 3:56 and the other for 3:59. The second alarm woke me. I rarely have a problem with early morning wakes or starts, I am excited to get up and go and this was no exception. Dean languished a bit in his bag before rolling out. After throwing together our gear in an ascent pack, we started out at 4:44 am. The grade up to ridge was the same standard steady eddie grade we'd been traveling the day before. A 1000 feet later and 40 minutes we arrived at Lunch Counter to find another party of four waking and preparing their summit packs. We chatted for a bit, borrowed some sunscreen as I couldn't find mine in my pack, and strapped on our crampons. The snow was hard enough that it appeared kicking steps would be difficult.


Now the route toughens. The top of Pikers peak is 2200 feet away, and around a scant 1.2 miles at a 30 degree grade. That's steep enough that if you can't kick a step your on the toes of your crampons and your calves are gonna get a workout. I often opted to side step it up the ridge as it felt more comfortable than balancing on my tippy toes. The elevation also starts to become a factor, unless you sleep in a pressured tent or live at altitude. Towards the top of the ridge I was a bit light headed and was having to breath hard with a mini break ever 10 to 30 steps, depending on how hard I pushed myself. It was hard going. The ridge seems to go on and on forever and near the middle it bows in such a fashion that the ridge line disappears behind the curvature of the slope, and each step it was as though it just kept opening up above you the higher you climbed. At this point the world narrows down to the step in front of you and you set small goals like leading for 200 steps and then following for 200 steps, or making it from one small pile of snow to the next. More than anything you just feel tired, not in a must sleep sense but in a dearth of energy.

Finally we broke out on the top of Pikers Peak and it lived up to its name as a false summit, how disappointing to see the huge gape between us and the summit. The gang of four had passed us on the way up and greeted us, we took their photo for them, and they ours. At this point came decision time. To reach the summit and get back to Pikers was a 90 minute to 2 hour traverse, and then traversing back to camp, and back to the car and back down to Portland. Many feet and miles lay between us and my family waiting for me to join them in Cannon Beach. Dean had seen his Lunch Counter and would return at the end of the month, so he wasn't particularly anxious to summit. Glancing at the time, we'd come so far, and it was so close and yet there was such a ways to go for me to get back that I opted to return. So we stripped off our crampons, put on an extra pair of pants and stepped over the edge of the ridge to glissade back down to Lunch Counter. That is one steep ridge and it was a bit scary starting out. You sit on your butt, you hold your ice ax head in your right hand close to your chest and the point at the end of the ax shaft is next to the snow on your left hip. As you descend you use the end of the ax as a brake and steering mechanism, if you get going too fast you roll to your left onto your chest and dig the point of ice ax head into the snow leaning hard into it to come to a stop in a self arrest. There were a couple of times sliding down that I had to roll and stop my self as I was getting too fast and out of control. It was still fairly early in the morning, and despite the fact that Dean went first, the hard ice really bruised me up and the extra pair of shorts I'd put on, did nothing more than act as a ready made wedgie. All of that said, it was a blast zipping down in less than 10 minutes what had taken over 90 minutes to get up.

From Lunch Counter its a loping descent to our camp where Seth had been dutifully melting snow. Exhausted Dean and I lethargically broke down our portion of camp and re-stuffed all our gear in our bags and we started the long 5 mile slog back to the car. By the time we arrived at the logging road, the hip belt of my pack was bruising the bones on my hips, and in an effort to relieve them I unsnapped the belt and let the shoulder straps dig in and carry the load. We started cutting cross the logging road switch backs in an effort to get down faster. Finally Seth said "I see windshields" and we'd finally arrived back at the car. The sweetest reward was a Dark Snickers, that hadn't made it into my pack, but was stuffed in a corner in the back of Seth's car.

Driving back to Hood River I lay down in the back seat and feel asleep immediately, I woke as we crossed the river back into Oregon. We stopped outside Hood River for the ritual post outing feed at Charburger, a place I'd seen on the roadside. I ordered the big cheese burger, a side of warm pecan pie and a large ice cold milk. Filling and delicious. Seth dropped me off at the Portland airport where I picked up a rental car and we parted, me to drive to Cannon Beach to meet my family and Seth and Dean to return to theirs in North Bend. The drive out to the coast was relaxing as the green fields of farm land rolled by. I serendipitously found an awesome radio station KINK, which played great music, keeping me perfect company for the ride. I arrived in time to go out to dinner with family and we spent the evening on the beach at Haystack Rock watching the sun set. Having gone from 11,600 feet to literally sea level in one day, I'd seen a lot of beautiful sights, but spending time with friends and family are what I enjoyed the most.

Full photo set on Flickr