I have been on Mt Rainier three times and summited twice. Two of my climbs were by a route known as Disappointment Cleaver. This is very likely the most popular route to the summit and as such it sees hundreds if not thousands of ascents each year. I first climbed it in 1977 along with the Desert Mountaineer and a couple of his friends. Although this was a fun climb, there were no real outstanding events or wacky things that happened that make it especially noteworthy in any way. We climbed it pretty much by using the standard formula. We started from Paradise ranger station and hoofed it up the long interminable slog to Camp Muir. We spent the night in the stone hut with a variety of climbers from around the world.
Well I guess there was one thing of note. One of the climbers from another group wasn’t feeling well and had a nasty cough. Our buddy Jonathon was a paramedic and after listening to this guy’s chest concluded that he might have pulmonary edema. Not positive, but all the signs and symptoms were there. Enough so that they wisely decided to descend. We got up at midnight or thereabouts, and choked down some Roman Meal (nasty stuff) and followed the footprints by headlight to the summit. Even in those days there was a well-worn path to the top, but this particular day there were only a few other climbers on the hill. It was really windy and cold so we were bundled up accordingly. We took some obligatory photos and made our way back down to camp and all the way down to Paradise in one push. A long day to be sure.
This brings us to the main thrust of this story. Even only taking into account our summit day and not the time we took to hike in; it took us approximately 14 hours to climb to the top, come down, pack up and descend back to the car. But here’s the deal… there are some cats out there that are doing car to summit to car climbs of the Disappointment Cleaver route in the 5 hour range. Yeah, you read that right… 5 hours. Guys with skis are under 4 hours.
There are a lot of moving parts that go in to making something like this possible. You have to go light. The proverbial ‘Anorak Climb’; a hand full of gels and a water bottle in your pocket and the clothes on you back is all that you can afford. Weather has to be right. Snow conditions need to be perfect. The great climber Alex Lowe was once described as the ‘lung with legs’. With that image in mind you need to be insanely fit. And you need to have the inner desire, fortitude, and peace of mind that allows you to even think about doing this let alone actually pull it off.
Paradise Ranger Station is at about 1,658m in elevation. The summit is at 4,392m. My math makes that approximately 2,734m of elevation gain.
Not a good day to be on the summit
For those of you that are into these kind of records here is a sampling of some climbing speed ascents for what it’s worth:
- Mt Rainier 4hrs 40min Round Trip by Willie Benegas
- Denali 16hrs 46min Round Trip by Ed Warren
- Everest 8hrs 10min Basecamp to Summit by Pemba Dorjee Sherpa
- The Seven Summits 58hrs 45min Cumulative Basecamp to Summit by Christian Stangl
- Eiger N Face 2hrs 28min Heckmair route by Dani Arnold
- Snake Dike (Half Dome) 3hrs Car to Car by Dean Potter
- El Cap Nose Route 2hrs 23min Alex Honnold/Hans Florine
- Watkins/El Cap/Half Dome 18hrs 50min Link-up by Honnold – solo
- Epinephrine 1hr 15min By Jash Stewart (this is about 19 pitches to 5.9)
- The 50 US highpoints 43days 3hrs 51min Mike & Matt Moniz (Matt was 12)
Bear in mind that these are always in a state of flux, and that people will always argue the toss over the details. But all pretty impressive in my book.
This whole story was inspired by a sidebar I read in Gripped magazine today…. On his 29th birthday Alex Honnold climbed 290 pitches on or around the Squamish Chief.