The year was 1980. I had been climbing a lot and was in pretty good shape. I had met this guy named Karl and was spending a lot of time climbing with him. He was an instructor at my college and was about thirty years my senior. But holy smokes… for a guy his age, was he fit! For some reason Karl, wanted to climb Mt Rainer by the Furher Finger route. I was game for anything in those days of course so we made our plans and off we went. One of Karl’s friends was going to join us; this guy named Bill H. But get this… this cat had at least ten years on Karl. I think he was in his early to mid seventies. I had been on an outing with him before, and I knew that he had stamina, but I sure was a bit uncertain about his ability on climbs of a more technical nature.
Normally I wouldn’t head out into this
We got a mid-day start from Paradise and followed the crowded skyline trail for a ways. The weather was fairly unsettled but we forged on confident that the forecast was going to be correct. Before too long we had to leave the comfort of the trail and head cross country. At this point we actually did start to become concerned about the weather as there were some isolated thunder storms and we actually saw a tree get hit by lightning in the distance. There is a spot where we needed to drop some elevation to gain the Nisqually Glacier. Here we took a brief pause to collect our thoughts; the lighting strike notwithstanding we decided to continue, so we roped up and pressed on. It was easy going until the steep chute that takes you up to the Wilson Glacier. Not difficult, just plain old hard work, especially because of the heavy packs and now we are close to 2,900m. I was sucking wind for sure; but the geezers I was with seemed to be doing just fine. Finally after about six hours we made camp.
Camp
The weather was still improving so we all had high spirits. Bill decided that he would leave the climb to us and would just laze about in camp the next day. We ate dinner, sorted our gear for the following day and turned in.
By morning the skies were crystal clear, with not a breath of wind. We got a much later start than we should have on a route of this nature, but still pretty early by civilian standards. We left camp at 0315 and made our way to the base of the route. What a great climb. This is a straight to business, no nonsense climb, and reportedly the shortest route to the summit on the mountain. That of course comes with a price. The focal point of the route is an hourglass shaped couloir that is about forty-five degrees, maybe a bit steeper in spots, and about 600m high. It’s also got a reputation of being a bit of a bowling alley. This side of the mountain gets sun early and for most of the morning is in direct sun. It would have been better had we started much earlier, especially considering we were planning on descending the same way.
There was only a minor bergschrund to cross and after that it was smooth sailing. The snow was rock hard at this time of day and we made excellent time cramponing up the steep slope. The angle finally eased at around 3,900m and from there it just becomes a glacier slog up to the crater rim and over to the summit. It took us about six hours to tag the summit from our camp.
Top of the finger
As we were making our way back to our descent we met up with two climbers that appeared to be coming from the Success Cleaver route. We stopped and chatted for a few minutes. One of the climbers was wearing this cool purple Häagen-Dazs Ice cream shirt. I mean, who doesn’t like ice cream, right? The guy was asking us about how our climb went, and how were the conditions in the couloir, and commented on how he had noticed that we were un-roped. Just at this point I heard the unmistakeable cackle of a walkie talkie coming from the guys pack, and my spidey- senses went off. And yes the next words out of the guy’s mouth were about the park climbing regulations mandated that climbers be roped up. And that yes he was a ranger, and that yes while even off duty he could fine the two of us.
There was a lull in the conversation, then I explained that yes indeed we were un-roped in the couloir because of speed and safety. There was another lull in the conversation, at which point I commented that I had heard that rock fall was a common occurrence on the route that they had climbed. To which they replied yes. “Oh, so where are your helmets then?” I responded. Another lull. “Just make sure you guys rope up on the way down” Yes Mr. Ranger.
We needed to skedaddle anyway because we were burning daylight, and already it was really too late in the day to be safe coming down that route, but we had no options and were pretty much committed at this juncture. So this was a good opportunity to get while the getting was good. We tied in and started down. The snow was mush compared to the morning, and seemed pretty unstable. We didn’t think that it was going let go in a big way so we went for it. We were able to plunge step and glissade down with ease and speed, and only caused a few minor slough avalanches which we rode out. There was minor some rock fall as we were worried about, but it turned out to be minimal and we got through the danger zone unscathed. And yes, we were wearing helmets. It took us less than two hours to get from the summit back to our tent.
We quickly packed up, slogged out, and were back in Vancouver very late in the evening