Rainier Report: Friday, August 2

5:00 a.m.: My eyes still wide open, Keil opened the tent door and with a big grin said, "okay guys, it's time to pack up and head out." I couldn't quite believe his confidence, but it did lend me strength. I started packing by headlamp, even as the storm seemed to continue worsening. I looked in the vestibule to get my pack. Snow had drifted hard, filling every exposed crack in all of our packs and boots. My boots were filled to the top with wet snow.

6:00 a.m.: An hour later we had broken camp and packed. The wind and cold were intense. Soon, we huddled together tying into the rope, testing our prussiks, and worrying. Keil yelled instructions I could barely hear over the wind and we set out. He followed his compass bearing almost unerringly to the far side of the crater, where our departure route descended. The standard route back to Paradise Lodge was the best marked and the one Keil had climbed the most as a guide. Wands, three foot bamboo rods with a tiny orange flag, marked the way back down. Theoretically, we would just walk straight from wand to wand and make our way down. It was blowing hard though, and there was no guarantee we could follow them all the way.

As we crossed the crater, all I could see was white. In all directions. the ground was flat, featureless. Three people ahead of me on the rope team, Keil was a barely perceptible blur.

We started down the hill. I had finally warmed up inside my parka from the exertion of walking in the wind with a heavy pack through fresh snow. My outlook was greatly improved by action. Laying in the tent scared out of my wits I felt helpless. Now we were doing something.

A few hundred feet later we came upon the first large crevasse to negotiate. The most common means of getting around wide open crevasses is the "end run," or simply walking around. In this case it was too large, and a pile of debris allowed us to walk down into the slot, along it, and then out a ramp on the other side. Doing so, however, meant front-pointing down a steep section of snow. Keil went first, probing the debris for weak points, a likely outcome with all this fresh, sticky, unconsolidated snow confusing the melt pattern of the debris beneath. Once he found a safe passage, Mark followed.

Anthony, third on the rope, then turned around to descend into the crevasse. Four steps down, I saw him fall as his left leg punched into a weak point. I immediately leapt uphill and slammed my ax hard into the ground to help arrest his fall. Annabel--one behind me on the rope--had already assumed a sturdy hip-belay position. Anthony pulled himself up and continued.

Annabel and I followed in turn. Snow drift on the debris ramp caused it to angle up with the wind, so we had to traverse a ramp with a wide open slot five feet below us. My crampons kept balling up as I walked--becoming packed with wet, fresh snow, rendering the points next to useless. To un-ball them, you whack the side of your foot with the handle of your ice axe. However, doing so puts you momentarily off balance as you hold your foot in the air and swing the ax. This was worsened by my heavy pack. So it became a crapshoot in places--clean the crampons with almost every step in a scarily unbalanced position or walk with big balls of slick snow on my feet?

As I crossed the debris ramp, my left balled up foot gave way and I fell. I again slammed my ax into the snow to stop myself a few feet shy of the hole. Annabel leaned back and planted her feet to help catch the fall, though from her position there was little she could do. With the rope running parallel to the crevasse, as it was in this case, there's not much a rope team member can do to stop you from swinging in--the load hits the rope too far after an uncontrolled slide begins.

We were now 20 minutes into our descent and twice I had gone into self-arrest--under normal conditions an emergency-only measure. Things looked grim. The storm did not slacken. Thankfully though, my fear had vanished. The team was all business now. We knew what we needed to do and we simply did it.

After going around a few more crevasses and one precarious snow bridge, we stopped to rest. It was brief so we wouldn't chill too badly, but we had to stop for a moment. Rime ice from the blowing snow and wind covered my eyebrows and parts of my six-day old facial growth. Snot poured onto my upper lip. When I pulled my glasses off to wipe the moisture from the lenses, a ring of ice crumbled from where the glasses touched my face.

After making it down from the upper, more heavily-crevassed portion of the mountain, we continued to descend but on more easily negotiated terrain. Keil moved from wand to wand now with little trouble as we were in a more stable area where few crevasses meant more straightforward route-finding.

After what seemed like an eternity, we came to the top of Dissapointment Cleaver, a long deposition of rock slicing glacial ice up the middle. Down it was a well marked--though exposed--path. A fall here would be troubling because of the loose rock, difficulty arresting, and dangerous height. Our crampons started to ball-up worse than ever. As we descended, the snow had grown warmer, wetter, and stickier. With almost every step, I had to clear them.

Finally, we made it to the bottom of the cleaver and began a technically breezy traverse around to Cathedral Gap, and across the flats. We had only five hundred yards left until we reached to Camp Muir. From there, the rope and crampons could be put away.

Anthony punched through one more time just before we made it to Muir. It was a minor crevasse, though, and between the two of us, stopping his fall was no problem. Still, it was a tense moment because we were so close to Muir. I had all but turned my mind off. Anthony suddenly slipping in up to his waist made for a sudden, poignant wake-up call. We were still on a glacier.

A nerve-soothing beer later, the team relaxes at Paradise Lodge

1:04 p.m.: At last we reached Muir. We had been descending for six hours. We travelled five miles and lost 4,400 feet of elevation. I had to self-arrest three times (my first three real-life arrests). But it was over, except for the questions of the snowed-in climbers at Camp Muir who watched us walk out of the storm--out of the worst conditions Keil said he had climbed through in ten years guiding on Rainier.

We began the 4.5-mile hike on snow and trails down to Paradise lodge. Our minds and bodies were exhausted, but still we were exhilerated.

For two hours we hiked, glissaded down snowy hills on our butts, and talked at great length about cheeseburgers and beer.