Dates: 6/29/23 - 7/4/23

Crew: Martin Brzozowski, Landon Abboud, Julio Gutierrez Martinez, Zhenya Hanson

Locations: Mt. Rainier National Park, Seattle

Route briefs: Mountain Project, NPS Route Brief

Trip Video: By me!

Climbing Mt. Rainier via Emmons-Winthrop

Last year, Martin and I climbed Mt. Baker, and I got my first chance to lay my eyes on Mt. Rainier. I was pretty disappointed to sit out a chance to climb it and promised myself to try it again this summer. So it didn't take long into 2023 before I was taking my plan to Martin; revisit and climb on a route new to him (not the heavily trafficked Disappointment Cleaver (DC) route), targeting the weekend before the 4th of July holiday. 

We settled on the Emmons-Winthrop Glacier route, a climb that is much more of an independent adventure than the DC. The two glaciers that make up the majority of the route cover a quarter of the mountain. There is less maintenance and routefinding than the DC, and the snow and ice can reach angles of 40 degrees near the top. Crevasse danger is real and present, so everyone on the team had to be ready to perform rescue. To reach the top of the 14,411' behemoth takes 10,000' feet of vertical gain and 2-3 days of climbing.

Martin promptly invited our friends Landon and Julio, followed by Zhenya, all of whom worked at NASA with us, and none of whom had climbed a mountain before. I found myself now in a strange spot where I was the 2nd most experienced on the team. We had 4+ months to prepare and gel as a team, so I felt good about that, but it was a tall order. For the 3 new guys this meant learning everything about mountaineering I learned for Baker, plus additional camping and climbing skills I had already possessed. For all of us it meant physical and mental training, teamwork, and skills practice- so we got to work.

Day 0: Training and Arrival

Then the day came to fly out- we were all supposed to get there throughout the day, get our walk up permits from the ranger station, and be ready to rock... Then Martin and Landon missed their flight (with all our mountaineering gear). Oops!

As they scrambled to rebook, we pivoted. Zhenya and I went out to White River ranger station to be there when it opened and score our permits. When we got there, we were only the 5th group in line, and got our permits for 2 nights on the mountain.

Julio arrived after, and we had the day to kill before Landon and Martin's new flight would come in that night. Was there any doubt we'd head to Pike Place? I didn't buy anything but put my camera to good use in the moody halls filled with neon lights and fishmongers.

At the parking lot, we loaded up our packs, weighing them and distributing group gear. In the end with food, water, clothes, helmets, boots, rope, harnesses, climbing hardware, snow anchors, stoves, tents, sleeping bags and pads, and first aid kits, our packs came in from 40-50 lbs per person. Landon won the heaviest award with 50+, and mine came in right around 45 lbs. We shouldered the heavy packs, with the only solace being that they would get lighter, and headed on our way.

The first couple miles were meandering through the woods, enjoying the shade in the noontime heat but being attacked by mosquitos and eager to see the mountain. When it finally broke through, endless fields of snow and ice rose out of the pines and hung over us. Soon we were walking next to streams and a ruggedly carved valley that was the base of the Emmons Moraine area - the terminus of the far-retreated glacier. The day hikers dropped off once we reached Glacier Basin camp, where the forest falls away and the rocky slopes begin to win over. We weren't at treeline yet but were getting close.

From Glacier Basin we crossed a small alpine valley, rich green and full of flowers, before the trail began to climb a loose ridge that followed along (but above) the growing stream of meltwater. This ridge gave way to a talus field that we wound through until snow fully overtook the rock.

When the snow did come, it was our first "glacier," the small Interglacier which flows down from Steamboat Prow (splitting the Emmons and Winthrop glaciers) at 9400' to the elevation of 7000' where we were now. Small by glacier standards means it only contains 600 million cubic feet of ice. It also flows over a smooth enough area that crevasses were not a major concern, so we tentatively proceeded unroped until we saw some reason to tie in. 

After about 1000 feet of climbing, we paused for snow skills training. Martin scouted a safe area off the climbing track and free of rocks, and we dug a platform for our gear and our butts. Then we drilled the guys on snow travel techniques: step kicking, duck walking, French (flat foot steps), German (front-pointing), and American (a hybrid) techniques, and plunge-stepping to descend. After an hour of trudging up and down the hill to practice steps, we moved on to self-arrest. With Martin and I supervising, we showed them how to use your ice axe to stop a slide from any body orientation: Head up/downhill, face up/down on the snow. We put on our goretex jackets and pants for this, but even with the protection I got pretty soaked from laying in the melting afternoon snow. When we finished, clouds were moving in overhead and winds were picking up, so I got cold fast.

The clouds swept over the ridge we were climbing alongside and soon we were in our own little whiteout. Fortunately we soon climbed through them!

Finally we reached the top of the Interglacier after 2500' of snow climbing and 5000' above our start at White River campground. This deposited us on the lower reaches of steamboat prow, where we would make camp for the night at a seldom-used site called Camp Curtis. The views were magnificent, with Little Tahoma's rocky jut across the Emmons Glacier from us, clouds rolling in heavily on the other side of the mountain, and a sunset glow engulfing all.

In between enjoying the views, we set up camp. The wind was picking up and it was cold, so we pitched our two tents in the ruins of old rock rings. Martin and Landon got a more sheltered area for their 2 man, and me, Julio, and Zhenya were left more on the ridge in our 2(.5) man. Then we cooked up dinner, enjoyed the last of the setting sun, and retreated from the growing icy wind into our tents for the night.

The wind grew louder and louder overnight like a freight train, prompting me to use my earplugs before I could finally fall asleep. I was quite thankful for my cozy 20 degree bag by the time I did.

As we descended from our rocky encampment, the lower reaches of the Emmons glacier appeared several hundred feet below us. Standing in between was a loose slope of crumbly volcanic rock. We followed the most stable path down the side of the slope, but it quickly became sketchy especially for Landon and Julio in their rented hard plastic boots. They were unable to flex their feet to conform well to the slope and every toe edge of those hard boots bore the risk of tearing away more rock from our already narrow path. We hit a bottleneck behind another team and had to do a balancing act, keeping low and tucked in to the slope. A tumble down it would be pretty bad- near the bottom it visibly cliffed out and there were also crevasses in the glacier waiting to swallow up anyone who survived the rock tumble.

Eventually we made it down safely and commenced roping up for the first time! Since we were now on a real glacier, crevasse danger was real and roping up, moving at our intervals, and keeping a watchful eye out was paramount. From front to back the team was Martin, Landon, Zhenya, Julio, and Me.

It was an uneventful climb up to Camp Schurman from here, just gaining about 1000 feet as we traversed the glacier and got used to team travel. We traveled over progressively larger crevasses, mostly just narrow cracks we could step across but by the time we reached camp they were beginning to get huge and we crossed on the well-traveled snow bridges that span them. 

Camp Schurman was bustling with mid-morning activity from teams that were hanging out in camp. Several teams were heading out into the snowfields to practice skills, others were just hanging out shooting the shit. Rangers were in the stone hut at the base of the rocky Steamboat prow, with the outhouses behind. We found a spot for our tents and shoveled out two platforms in the snow. Then we took a short break to ride out the worst of the midday heat, and commenced skills training.

Martin and I started by reviewing our snow anchor building, setting pickets into the snow two different ways and equalizing them to make a SERENE anchor. (Strong, Equalizer, Redundant, Efficient, No Extension). Then we had the others do the same. We also practiced t-trenching other things (like an ice axe) for alternative anchor options. After practicing building pulley systems off our anchors, Martin wanted to do a real simulation. We roped back up as a team and headed back the way we came to find a safe area we could practice crevasse rescue from. When we found a large enough crevasse with a clean entry and a safe area above it, Martin used his avalanche probe and shovel to make a safe zone for the team to stay in. 

A hot meal and hot tea gave us some life back, but the sun was already starting to set and we had to prepare for tomorrow's extremely early departure for summit day. We started boiling snow for water, which took most of the night. Meanwhile everyone stripped down their packs to what we would need for summit day and staged our gear for the morning (morning being 1am).

Then I set up with my camera to capture the light show unfolding in the mountains below us. A haze of wispy clouds was hanging in the valleys, just enough to illuminate with color as the sun went down. It was a calming way to end the day knowing how intense tomorrow was going to be.

The sun dips behind the next ridge over, churned glacier snow and ice below.

The wind rose again, bringing a swirling sheet of spindrift snow over the icy summit of the mountain far above, and sending us into our tents for reprieve. Martin and Landon brought the stove into the dead-air shelter in front of their tent door and continued melting snow for water- we would need 2-3 liters per person for tomorrow and were basically out after dinner. It was a lengthy process to melt and treat enough for all of us. It was coming up on 10pm when I retreated to my sleeping bag, and we agreed we could push our wakeup to 2am since we were ready to roll.

Leaving camp behind as we set off, we crossed some crevasses right above Emmons Flats that Martin easily moved us through, and then crevasse danger died down for a bit as icy steepness took over. The slope gradually steepened until it was 20-30 degrees, requiring more intense frontpointing on the iced-over snow. For over an hour it was calf-crushing monotony, kicking crampon points into half-foot sized steps in the snow, stepping up, and repeating. Aside from the pools of light from our headlamps it was near total darkness. Alien-looking formations of ice leered where huge crevasses were in action off-route, slipping away in the darkness as we passed.

The sun rises at roughly 5am, but long before it appears a glow on the horizon is enough light to begin really appraising your surroundings. When that glow finally came, we could see our camp over a thousand feet below, gigantic ice formations off on our left where the glacier clashes with the rocks, and endless ice slopes ahead of us. We proceeded to trudge, taking a water break roughly every half hour. 

The routefinding was pretty simple throughout the day- even though the DC route is far more trafficked and marked, the most-used footpath here was easy for Martin to pick out and follow. After a couple hours, the direct attack on the mountain lessened and we began traversing. We now followed a narrow bootpack chopped across the angle of the slope rather than up it. While this is less tiring, it's more intimidating since you have a view of the long slide you'd take if you fell. Using a pole in the downhill hand and spike of our ice axes in our uphill hands, we carefully planted each step with an accompanying thunk of slamming spikes into the hillside for additional support. 

The traverse lead us to "the corridor," a ridge of glacier snow that runs up to 11,600 feet and was a sort of narrow ramp up the mountain.

At the top of the corridor, the crevasses were open for business. We followed the bootpack as it wove between the mouths of crevasses 20-30 feet wide and hundreds of feet deep, just a deep black-blue inside when peering down. 

The absolute spookiest crossing took place with massive crevasses on either side of us as we traversed the hillside for some 200 yards. The slushy path was barely wide enough for a single boot, so we crossed one foot in front of the other, placing a solid axe between every step. If anyone on the team slipped here, it would've taken a miracle for everyone to not go sliding in to the endless black hole right beneath.

We wound around crevasses, following the "alpine meadow" as it went way way out to clear the largest of them. Finally a ramp lead off the meadows after endrunning the final crevasses, and took us into a saddle between the "liberty cap" summit and the true summit. It was now about 10am and we sat at about 13,000 feet, and we had set an ideal turnaround time of 10-11am and no-later-than of 12pm. We decided to continue but with awareness of our turnaround to not get caught on top too late. As we continued, the altitude was definitely getting to the team though, with everyone but me and Martin needing more frequent breaks. The leg burn was getting stronger, but every time we stopped I was getting instantly cold as the growing wind and falling temps cut through to my bones.

It was a clear shot to the summit now, with no crevasses standing in our way. Just another 1400 feet of low-angle snow that we had to knock out as we followed Columbia Crest.. As we started out from the saddle, numerous other teams on their way down passed us until we were basically the only ones left on the upper mountain. The true summit lies on the crater rim of the volcano, so we ended up on the rim for the final stretch.

As we came up onto the narrow walkway that the rim edge forms, the wind roared over from the far side of the mountain and hit like a semi truck. All of the rope between each of us was picked up and whipped straight sideways, and every gap in my layer system was suddenly icy cold. I put up all my hoods, cinched down my gloves, and put my shoulder down into it. Talking to Martin and looking at the mountain weather later, we think the wind was about 60mph, and the air temps at the summit were 25-30 degrees, meaning windchill was somewhere from 0-10F. Suffice to say, it was chilly.

The next time I braved a look up, Martin was standing on the highest point of the crater rim- we were there! One by one we reached the summit, and then I was there too. SUCCESS! We quickly took some team pictures, then retreated down into the volcano's crater for shelter from the wind. And while we'd just made it up, it was almost exactly 11am and we needed to keep moving for schedule and to keep warm. Julio and Zhenya were showing some serious altitude symptoms now, and the only way to remedy that was to head down. The unfortunate reality of mountaineering is the summit is not the success point, but only halfway there. In this case, we had been climbing steadily for 8 hours, so we were much weaker now but had to get allll the way down to the car so not even halfway!

I took some final photos, seeing Mt. Adams looming large on the horizon now and one final team came up from a different route in front of it. We traded pics with them and then untangle the mess of ropes we'd made in our scramble for shelter.

Our retreat was down the same route, so it was a matter of retracing our steps, but with some new twists. With the team order flipped now, I was leading us down! A quick retracing back to the saddle showed us that the neve (snow) was even slushier in the high noon sun, and we got into the rhythm of plunge-stepping down and riding the small slush slide down before stabilizing and taking your next step.

The crevasse end-runs through the meadows were more nerve-racking being in pole position. Stepping carefully on the narrow track, I had to slow my pace to keep everyone on the rope comfortable as we threaded the needle between the massive pits. 

Back at camp, our first instinct was to collapse into our tents for the shade and relief from over 12 hours on our legs. Unfortunately, we still had a long way to go. We needed to reverse our entire first 2 days, heading back down the lower reaches of the glacier, up and over steamboat prow, down the interglacier, and through the woods back to the car. We packed up camp by 5pm and roped up for one final time.

A quick and easy descent on the lower reaches of the glacier later, we found ourselves at the base of the crumbly rock slope that lead back to our first night's camp. From the bottom looking at the expanse of it, finding the shifting trail we'd taken down was impossible. We tried to pick out an easy and secure way up, but before we knew what was happening, the team was split up into three different routes, with wildly different success...

Zhenya found a quick way up and was over the ridge in no time. Julio stuck with me and I tried to retrace Zhenya's path but found it less secure than anticipated. Julio and Landon found themselves struggling for traction in their plastic boots again, and I wound up guiding Julio while Martin and Landon stuck together. Somehow they ended up way off trail and Landon was seriously stuck- no way up, and trying to downclimb out of the spot he'd gotten to was very tricky. Martin followed him up to his perch 50 feet above the trail I was on and led him down, hold by hold. In the end, we all made it back over safely with no close calls, but it took over an hour to get up the little slope and it was now 7pm.

Here, we caught a break. The interglacier was a snowfield and we knew it, so we could save a ton of time by glissading down. We threw on our goretex and had an absolute ball zooming down 1500' in no time flat. It was exhausting keeping speed in check and staying in the track, but we had a real-life mariokart race that had us all laughing by the bottom. A much needed morale boost!

Back on rock and dirt, we just had to retrace our steps out of the valley and through the forest to the car. Darkness was starting to fall, and we were collectively drained of all energy but we just had to keep pushing for those last 4 miles.

At 9, the sun went down and we brought out our headlamps and kept trekking. I was more exhausted now than I had ever been in my life. We kept trudging, but my pack felt like it was inching toward weighing 100 lbs and my eyelids did too. I started walking 5 steps with my eyes open and 5 with my eyes shut, ready to fall asleep even as I hiked. Finally, finally, when I was questioning my sanity if the car was even there, we reached the parking lot. It was 10:30 pm and we had been moving, hiking, climbing, hauling for 20 hours straight since we set out that morning.

Nobody felt confident they could stay awake for the drive back to Seattle, but we had to get back to catch flights early in the morning. So Landon brought out his secret weapon: smelling salts?! He cracked the packet, sniffed them, and drove us all the way back to Seattle miraculously. I tried to stay awake in the backseat to make sure he didn't lose control, but I was in and out of consciousness the whole time, like a weird fever dream. We made it back though, and promptly collapsed on the floor of John's apartment for insta-sleep. The climb was truly over now.

And, for the first time ever, I tried my hand at video editing. Mostly GoPro footage with my director's touch on it, I'm pretty proud of the result and it's made another great way to relive the memories from this adventure. Enjoy!