Rainier

We woke up at the butt crack of dawn, roughly 4-5am Saturday morning. Only to find the sky completely covered in clouds. Yet, we decided to head to the mountain anyway. I mean why not, the weather report said partly cloudy and good hiking conditions. We filmed a little video and take off around 5:45am.

We took a pit stop on the way up for survival food and gas. Nothing particularly interesting about the food stop. However, the gas, wahoo was that intense. I have recently come to find out there is such a thing a “speed pumps” for semis. These things spit out gas a billion miles and hour and let me tell you, gas in the face is unpleasant in every way. Moving on…

We arrive at the mountain at around 8:30am. Walk into the ranger station to release the tension of last nights Mongolian grill extravaganza. On our way back to the car we ask the rangers how the hike is. He tells us, most of the hike is white out but around 8k elevation is clear. I say sweet, great for photography, let’s do it. So we head out at 9am.

One question was continually posed by the crew the whole hike up. “Do we really think the sun is up there?” The entire hike up we encountered many people who assured us the sun was coming only 1000 feet up to go. So we pushed on, and on and on. I would say we reached around 8500 – 9000 feet when we came across the only honest guy on the mountain. He told us, “nope, there is a small bit of sun at the top but it should be gone by now.” At that point we decided we were done. At 3pm Rob released more furry on the top of the mountain. Good thing we brought the toilet paper.

Next, was probably the most exciting part of our trip. Sliding down the mountain! Not only was it exciting, it was completely scary. Visibility was around 20 feet and there were crevasses all over the place. First Sean goes, then Jon, Drew, me, then Rob. Top speed around 20 miles an hour. The only breaks we had were our feet and they didn’t work. My method of stopping was bailing out and come to a rolling stop. We were able to do this for around 2 miles and then had to hike out the rest.

The final mile was the worst. The sky was clear, and the sun was out….

Here are the photos from the hike. These were taken by all of us with random cameras. The video will come in a week or so once I figure out how to edit videos.

Click here for the Full Screen Slide Show

Only one goal this time. Hike mt Rainier. So far the climb team consists of Rob, Jon, Drew, Sean and myself. We will be departing on Saturday Aug 30th at roughly 6am. Team members are being urged to camp out at my parents house the night before.

This trip will be documented using a canon 30d with sigma 15mm fisheye and canon vixia hv30. That’s right, this will be the first trip fully documented in both photos and HD video. We will be documenting the trip starting the night before we leave for the expedition.

Be sure to check back for the video and photos.