Mt. Rainier - Liberty Ridge

This week I completed a dream route.  One of those routes that every climber from the Northwest puts on a pedestal.  Considered a benchmark, climbing Liberty Ridge proves that the Northwest alpine climber is ready to head out onto difficult big mountain terrain.  I guess now I am too.

Matt Jillson and I below the route

Originally this was supposed to happen immediately after I finished my training in General Surgery on June 30.  But weather and partners required flexibility, and for the first time in 5 years I was able to comply!  We headed out on July 4 with a perfect weather forecast.  Due to requirements by the Mt. Rainier National Park to get a climbing permit, this climb that could potentially be doable in 2 days became a 3 day climb since you have to wait for the ranger station to open to get permits before you can set out.  So we arrived at the station a little early in order to ensure that we got permits, given the holiday and the popularity of the route.  That was a smart move.  When we arrived, we lined up behind a party of three that were trying a route on Curtis Ridge.  Behind us were several other parties heading for Lib Ridge.  In the parking lot, we met two guys - Matt Schweiker and Gerry Croteau, both Mountaineers members from Everett and Seattle, respectively.  We wished them luck and then headed out on the Glacier Basin trail.  After three miles of gentle trail, we emerged onto the Inter Glacier.

Inter Glacier

The heat was rising.  We slogged up a hot slope to reach St. Elmo's Pass and had lunch.  Shortly after arrival, the party of three including Tom Sjolseth heading for Curtis Ridge, and Matt and Gerry showed up.  We wished the Curtis Ridgers good luck and set out along with Matt and Gerry for the Winthrop Glacier.

Matt and Gerry follow across the Winthrop

We arrived at camp on the lower Curtis Ridge around 7200 ft. in the early afternoon.  A few wispy clouds rolled through in the early evening, but were of no concern.  We had a killer view of the ridge.  From our vantagepoint, the crux of the next day would be navigating the Carbon Glacier and accessing the toe of the ridge.  Gerry went to check out potential ways of gaining the lower Carbon from Curtis Ridge.  Steep, horribly loose chossy slopes led down to the moat, which was extremely broken up.  He found a car-sized boulder with some tatty slings around that obviously multiple parties had rapped from.  Matt was super nervous about the boulder, given that it sat on a slope with loose kitty litter pebbles.  Gerry spotted a crappy gully marked by a cairn.  He followed the loose ramp down and found that it would indeed work to gain the glacier.  Listening to him from above without being able to see him, it sounded like a war zone of rock fall.  But luckily due to its traversing nature, it all apparently got swallowed up by the moat.

Gerry and Matt assess the upper Carbon Glacier

Day 2 would be another short day since we only wanted to get to Thumb Rock at 10,750 ft., but we wanted to leave early in order to climb the steep slope above the bergschrund in the cold.  We set our alarm for 4:30.  We were moving an hour later.  At this point, we were planning on basically climbing with Matt and Gerry, but hadn't officially linked up yet.  In the back of Jillson's and my mind, we still wanted to beat them to Thumb Rock and get the best bivy site!

Last good view of the route in the early morning light

After descending the horrible ramp, we roped up to cross the moat and gain the Carbon Glacier.  The moat was pretty broken up and was bulletproof snice.  I led out and crossed some moderate terrain, placing two ice screws before reaching a flat spot and bringing Jillson out.

Jillson climbs out onto the Carbon Glacier

From there it was cruiser until we reached the upper Carbon.  Then it became extremely broken up.  Fortunately the footprints from previous parties were faintly visible which made routefinding easy.  A highly circuitous path finally led us to the climber's right side of the toe of the ridge and the bergschrund protecting its access.  We took a brief break.  It was around 8:30 am.  Matt and Gerry were right behind us.  I gave Jillson the lead, since I'd gotten to lead the transition to the Carbon Glacier, and he set out first.

Thumb Rock and the bergschrund

Jillson crosses the 'schrund

 Once above, he placed a single picket, and we cruised up 1500 ft. of nice neve to Thumb Rock, arriving at 10:00 am.  Gerry and Matt got there five minutes later.  We selected the flattest tent platform, but they may have gotten the best one.  Theirs hugged the base of Thumb Rock.  It was more sheltered, but required some digging.  What followed was one of the most chill days I've ever had in the mountains.  We napped, we ate, we drank, we shot the shit, we shot the shit, we shot the shit some more. 

Shooting the shit with Matt, Matt, and Gerry at Thumb Rock

A particularly humbling aspect of the day was watching the climbing rangers haul Nick Hall's body off the mountain.  Many of the details of his fall are still lacking.  But seeing the Chinooks hover around made it easy to remember that the most important component of the climb is coming home safe. 

Chinook helicopter looks for Nick Hall's packaged body

In the late afternoon, a middle-aged couple arrived that we'd seen in the parking lot.  Something was odd about them, and we wanted to make damn sure we were well ahead of them the following day.  In the evening just before dark, three Asian guys showed up as well.  The four of us were pretty icy toward all of them, since it seemed pretty dangerous for them to climb up to Thumb Rock on that steep sun-baked slope in the heat of the day.  After the entire day's ruminations, at this point we were an official foursome, but the rope teams were to remain the same.  But now entering the true technical climb we would stay together and help each other out if necessary.

Our third day on the mountain was just as stellar as the first two.  We woke up around 2:30 (after getting nearly 8 hrs' sleep!) and were moving within an hour.  We opted to take the climber's left option up out of Thumb Rock as Option B was looking a little thin for mixed climbing.  The left option was solidly frozen neve, to 50 degrees.  We made quick work of this section and were nearing the Black Pyramid by sunrise.  The other parties were just leaving camp as far as we could tell. 

Schweiker heads up toward the Black Pyramid

Above the Black Pyramid, we encountered one pitch of extremely hard, brittle ice.  This averaged 50 degrees, with a short bulge at the top to 60-70 degrees.  It might have been possible to bypass this section to the right or left, but at this point we were making good time, had perfect weather, were feeling good, and hadn't climbed any real ice yet.  We pitched it out.  Matt Schweiker led first.  It turned out that the low angle of the ice made this super tiring, and Gerry opted to walk around most of it on the snow since it wasn't as fun as it looked.  The upper bulge was fun, though.  Even though I have more water ice experience than Jillson, I let him have this lead, because I thought there was going to be another tricky pitch at the upper bergschrund which could have a short vertical ice section.  Jillson led it in good style, placing three screws.

Ice above the Black Pyramid

Midway up the ice pitch

 Above this section, we cruised again to reach the upper bergschrund on the Liberty Glacier.  The wind was starting to pick up, and we were getting blasted by some pretty good spindrift.  But we didn't find any more technical ice climbing.  Just a delicate little snow bridge crossing the 'schrund, and more steep snow to 50 degrees to reach Liberty Cap.

Jillson is over the 'schrund

At Liberty Cap Matt and I celebrated with relief at having finished the technical route.  What a feeling!  While we waited for Matt and Gerry, Jillson prepared for a little patriotic display to mark the occasion.  Matt and Gerry hadn't gotten their fill of ice, so they went directly up from the bergschrund to climb some 60-70 degree rime ice to reach Liberty Cap instead of traversing.

Matt and Gerry head up some rime ice around 13,500 ft.

Once they joined us at the Cap, Jillson surprised them by lighting off a firecracker that he'd hauled all the way up, forgetting to light it off on July 4!  Gerry almost had a heart attack since he had no idea this was coming!

Leave it to Jillson to pull something unexpected out of his pack!

From Liberty Cap to the saddle, something unexpected happened.  I had one of the most amazing "mountain moments" of my life.  All the sudden, while walking along on flat ground toward the saddle and the true summit, I was overtaken by emotion and started sobbing.  Literally sobbing.  I just raised both arms to God and started praying and crying and thanking Him for all that I'd been through in the last 5 years and this amazing way of celebrating.  Wow.

The moment passed.  And then I bonked.  Or something, I don't know what.  I think I was just done.   I hadn't even gotten that fatigued climbing the route at any point.  I think that I was just emotionally spent from the stress of anticipating the route, climbing it, then coming down off the emotional high and spiritual experience I had.  Upon reaching the saddle I untied from the rope and sat down.  I told Jillson I wasn't sure I was going to the summit, which lay 800 heartbreaking feet above us.  He wasn't having it and basically made me promise to push on, but agreed to let me untie and get there on my own at my own pace.  He scampered on up and I struggled on.  I eventually made it, 20 minutes or so after the rest of the guys.  Since my first summit of Rainier occurred in a complete whiteout in the middle of a lenticular cloud packing 50-60 mph winds, I guess the second trip up was worth it.  It was cold and slightly breezy.  It was 9:43 am, slightly over 6 hrs. from Thumb Rock.  This time I actually got a summit shot!

14,410 ft.

We signed the register (which I also hadn't done in 2009) and joined the hordes heading down the Winthrop/Emmons route.  There was one tricky crevasse system that had to be negotiated.  On it we found a party of four downclimbing it with massive loops of loose rope hanging around and no belay system whatsoever other than that they only had one person moving at a time with the others crouched down!  We shouted some advice to them which they ignored, and we proceeded to simul-solo down the opposite side of a big block of ice, staying blissfully out of view of them.  We took a long break at Camp Shurman, depositing our blue bags, and slogged/glissaded down the Inter Glacier back to the cars.  We were tired by the time we reached the cars, but not crushed.

As I reflect back on this beautiful classic route, I don't think it was that hard.  It probably can get harder depending on the conditions.  But I do think it lives us to its reputation because of the clean, direct line of the route, its inherent beauty, lack of crowds, moderate objective hazard, and entertaining climbing.