Man vs. mountain

MOUNT RAINIER — I'm wearing a helmet with a headlight strapped on top, a backpack filled with clothes to keep me warm and crampons attached to plastic boots so goofy and futuristic I can only assume astronauts wear them on the moon.

It's 12:30 in the morning.

This is it. The final climb. Leaving behind the small hut at Camp Muir for 4,000 additional vertical feet of torture. Guided by the kind folks at Rainier Mountaineering, Inc. (RMI). Almost exactly 25 years after 11 died on Mount Rainier in the deadliest accident in American mountaineering history.

A quote from famed British climber Edward Whymper hangs on the hut's door.

It reads: "... Climb if you will, but remember that courage and strength are not without prudence, and that momentary negligence may destroy the happiness of a lifetime. Do nothing in haste, look well to each step, and from the beginning think what may be the end."

The final briefing meeting is 15 yards away. Stepping over a rock, my crampon catches my pants, ripping a hole, bruising a knee and sending me tumbling to the ground. As far as omens go, this is not a good one.

****

I spent three months obsessing over Mount Rainier, watching it from a distance, mumbling mountaineering in my sleep. This is the fault of my friend Mike McQuaid, who suggested that we climb it. Of course, at the time I was three beers deep — more proof that alcohol impairs your judgment.

The packet we received from RMI suggested climbing in the best shape of your life. That scared me more than the 10-point, sign-your-life-away "acknowledgement of risk" form, more than the $1,400 or so it costs to summit, and more than all the cheery lines of encouragement from our packet.

Like this: "Please clearly understand that mountaineering is inherently a hazardous sport. You are choosing to engage in an activity in which participants have been injured and worse."

I enlisted the help of a friend, Ryan Ashmead, and his personal-training fiancée, Julee. Her workouts were torturous, an exhausting mixture of Pilates, free weights, cardio and exercises involving a rubber bouncy ball, 5-pound weights and lots of sideways glances from folks in the gym at my apartment building.

I gained 20 pounds, sculpted muscles I didn't know existed and decided on a test run up Mount Si in North Bend with Mike three weeks before we would attempt to summit.

We brought backpacks to simulate the challenge ahead. Odd Mike side note No. 1: He filled his with a 20-pound box of cat litter.

The climb is about 4,000 vertical feet spread over 4 miles. And other than the quarter-sized blisters on my heels, we made it to the top with few problems. Once there, we didn't have to look far for additional inspiration.

Directly across the horizon, Rainier loomed, as if to say, "Come and get it."

Day 1: Monday, June 26

After interviewing Nate Robinson for a story, I stopped by my office. It felt like I was paying my last respects.

"Now remember," said my boss, Times sports editor Cathy Henkel, "there's no shame in turning back."

With that in my mind, we left early in the evening. Mike picked me up with his friend, Tampa Bay Lightning scout Jake Goertzen, and we pulled into Whittaker's Bunkhouse in Ashford a few hours later.

Whittaker's is like a small city of mountaineers. There were cars with license plates from Minnesota, New Jersey and Kentucky. There's a hotel, a bunkhouse, an equipment rental store and a small outdoor restaurant — all named after the first family of Rainier mountaineering.

People were checking e-mail, drinking Italian sodas and sitting on porches in various stages of fatigue.

We set up on the lawn outside the bunkhouse, looking like an advertisement for an outdoor store. A guide walked by and noticed our trail mix, dehydrated dinners, sleeping bags, long underwear, toilet paper, and a half-dozen REI bags — and scoffed.

"Looks like you bought them out," he said, shaking his head, which, in mountain talk, can loosely be translated to "rookies!"

Day 2: Tuesday, June 27

Training day. We rented equipment in the morning. My previous knowledge of mountaineering came in college, when in West Virginia covering a college football game, my roommate took the college's Mountaineers nickname literally and fell down the side of a hill shouting, "Now this is mountaineering!"

Not exactly. This was mountaineering. Crampons. Ice ax. And those boots. Odd Mike side note No. 2: He needed the largest boots in the store. Big, red, size-16 boats I took to calling "Shaq shoes."

Guides Billy Nugent and Joshua Halloran ran about a dozen of us through training near Paradise at the bottom of Mount Rainier. They were in phenomenal shape and had "real" jobs before making it through the Secret Service-like guide screening process.

Nugent, for instance, used to be a chemist for Coca Cola. Apparently, the mountains provide a little more kinetic energy.

We learned how to rest all the way to the summit. They teach you how to rest-step by locking your rear leg and placing your weight temporarily on your bones, putting pressure on thighs and rear instead of calves.

We also learned how to walk while roped together. And we learned how to catch ourselves when falling to prevent, well, injury and death. Halloran called this "sledding for adults," and we took turns sliding down the ice, screaming "falling!" while jamming our ice pick in the snow and using our legs and shoulders to leverage a stop.

Nugent's last words were: "It all comes down to efficiency. If you have that, you don't have to be a superstar to climb this mountain."

We returned to the bunkhouse and made final preparations. Odd Mike side note No. 3: He bought a bandana that said "hiker chick" — for posterity, he said. This earned him a new nickname.

I couldn't sleep. It was time for obsession to become reality.

Day 3: Wednesday, June 28

The group rode in silence from Ashford to Paradise. If anyone had concerns, they were not voicing them. In fact, the only rumbling was coming from my stomach as the sausage and egg burrito I consumed for breakfast was doing backflips. I was nervous.

"Let's go climb Mount Rainier," said Greg Collins, our lead guide.

I wondered if he recently took an ice ax to the head. It can't be that easy. Can it? Well, maybe for another guide, Paul Edgren, who was attempting his fifth summit in 10 days.

The hike from Paradise (elevation 5,400 feet) to Camp Muir (elevation 10,060) took the entire day. It went through an alpine zone onto the Muir Snowfield — named after John Muir, who climbed Rainier in 1888. We rest-stepped for an hour at a time, then took 15-minute breaks.

The views were spectacular, and I was already tired when we arrived at Camp Muir late in the afternoon. Our resting quarters were the small hut there, complete with quarter-inch-thick sleeping pads and a toilet that smelled like death.

We hung up clothes that were soaked in sweat and lightened our packs. The guides suggested eating — the food, dehydrated macaroni and beef, is the worst I'd had since college — and lying horizontal by 6 p.m. Sleep was fitful. And in walked our guide at 11:30 p.m.

Which brings us to where this story started. The final climb.

Day 4: Thursday, June 29

We left about an hour later. Even then I was reminded of a climbing quote a friend sent me from Friedrich Nietzsche: "A few hours' mountain climbing turns a rogue and a saint into two roughly equal creatures. Weariness is the shortest path to equality and fraternity — and liberty is finally added by sleep."

Ours is an interesting group, weary and fatigued all. There's Will Avery, our third guide and an aspiring lawyer. There's Ingrid Honziak from Dayton, Ohio, an ultra-distance runner who listed this climb among the hardest things she has ever done.

And there's Neil Schweitzer, among others, from Ashburn, Va., who attempted a Rainier summit several years ago and was turned back at 12,000 feet because of weather. He's crazy enough to try Round 2.

The final climb is split into four sections, and people drop out along the route. Jake decides not to make the final attempt. Bob Burke, from Cincinnati, stops after the first section — the Cowlitz Glacier — and the guides set him up in a tent. We won't be back for hours.

The second section was the aptly named Disappointment Cleaver, by far the hardest of the four, and by the time we reached it, the sun was coming up. Mike decided to stop at 12,300 feet, and since the guides were out of tents, they wrapped him like a mummy in a sleeping bag at the top of a glacier, using picks to ensure he would not fall asleep and roll back down the mountain. This counts as odd Mike side note No. 4.

I wanted to stay with him and entertained the thought. Mike was having none of that.

"Get to the top," he implored.

The final two sections are the ascent to the very top. It's the part of Mount Rainier blanketed entirely by snow, and midway through the fourth section I felt like quitting. I kept telling myself that some 6,000 people do this a year — leaving out that more than that fail — and reminding myself that I was writing a story whether I succeeded or not.

I walked behind and drew inspiration from Stephen Healy, from California. He needed to stop after nearly every step, but there was something in his body language that told me he would make it. Finally, after what seemed like hours, and was, come to think of it, Paul pointed to some rocks above us.

"That's the top!" he shouted.

The view was surreal. We could see the entire range of the Cascade Mountains. We could see Mount Jefferson in central Oregon. The hills we used for training were so far below they looked flat.

The guides let me, Neil and John Klopp of Tacoma — the rest of our group needed the rest — walk a quarter-mile across the crater at the summit to the highest point in Washington, a full 14,410 feet. Against the recommendations of our guides, I had not eaten since the first stop, and I felt dizzy bracing against 45-mph winds in 25-degree weather.

I carved "Mike" and "Jake" in the snow at the summit and thought about all the people who came before. We'd all made it — some way or another.

The group spent the rest of the day bound for Paradise with a quick, one-hour stop at Camp Muir. By the time we made it back to the bunkhouse, my legs were jelly, my feet throbbed and that feeling of elation, like the climb itself, seemed like it happened years ago. The guides even let me lead our group back down the mountain.

We arrived in Seattle later that night, and I was more tired than I've ever been. I knew the pain was temporary. I knew the accomplishment was not.

Even that was tempered, though, when I learned an old friend had died from an overdose while I was on my climb. And with that perspective, the mountain-as-a-metaphor-for-life started to make sense.

People try to climb their own mountains every day. Sometimes they summit. Sometimes they succumb. Life happens and growth comes from the experience, from the struggle, from the climb and not the summit.

Although the view wasn't bad, either.

Greg Bishop: 206-464-3191 or gbishop@seattletimes.com