Last weekend. Caution! Long Blog Ahead

My commuting amigo, Mike, and I boarded the Seattle train last Friday morning. Our conversations don’t usually run very deep, so we started chatting about sports and the weekend plans. He told me of dinner arrangements, the time and place he was going to see Avatar, and what he was going to do during the Football games. Soon, it was my turn.

“So do you have any weekend plans, Matt?”

“Well, I was thinking of mtn. biking tomorrow (Saturday).”

“Really, where at?”

“I’m not sure…”

“Who are you going with?”

“Well, I don’t know yet…”

“I’m going to start calling you Mr. ‘I don’t know!”

I laugh. “Yeah…”

Sometimes, life isn’t worth planning, because I know if something better comes along, I’m going to jump on that.

Weekend comes. I’m riding the train home, calling the two people I know who enjoy mtn. biking. Kyle is working; Jon is heading to Portland for the weekend. Lame. Jon offers to call some of his other biking buddies, and see if they’re doing anything, but concedes that they probably aren’t.

“This is lame!” I thought, and wondered why it was so hard to find other people who liked to have fun when I did. Where are all the hardcore people I heard about back in TN? In a place so ripe with opportunity, I have never had this hard of a time finding people to go on adventures with. Maybe they’re all living in some hippy, green commune on the Olympic Peninsula.

Once at home, I start to make biking preparations when Jon calls me back. The guy he thought was going riding on Saturday decided he wasn’t going anymore, but, he’s hiking and snowboarding Rainier instead… and if I was interested, Jon could send me his number.

Obvious choice. I call Rory, my newfound hiking/snowboarding buddy, and make arrangements for our 6:30am departure. We meet at the gas station in some town I don’t remember the name of, and head east. Rory is 31, lives in the same town I don’t remember the name of, does finish carpentry and kicks butt mtn. biking. Awesome.

After three hours of getting to know one another, we meet one of his friends, Paul, and Paul’s friend Marty at the trailhead. Paul recently returned from trekking in the Himalayas and Marty runs forty-mile cross-country marathons and climbed Denali last spring. Awesome.

At this point, I had gone past excitement at having met such outstanding folks, to nervous of having my ass handed to me trying to keep up with them on this mountain. The plan was to ascend around 5k vertical feet, to Camp Muir, then snowboard down. Paul and Marty had the advantage of ascending with skins*, and Rory and I would try our best to keep up on snowshoes.

We started hiking in a snowing and grey mist. It was probably around 25˚, so it didn’t take long at all to warm up. We would our way up through snowy forests and clearings for about an hour. Marty had established himself as the man to keep up with, and the rest of us gave it what we could while he waited on the difference.

Because the visibility was so poor, we ended up plotting our points with a GPS. Well, Paul and Rory did that with their GPS’, Marty had been on the mountain so many times he didn’t need one, and I just assumed that everyone else would make the right decision.

We had climbed through the tree line, and up onto the base of the Muir snowfield when the cloud layer lifted. Rainier appeared in all her majesty. The Nisqually followed the valley to our left, and the Cowlitz to the right beyond a cliff line. The sky was a snowy blue with the sun trying to break through the clouds. Each breath was crystal clear, and the windward side of my face/hair was completely frozen. I could not stop grinning.

Thirty minutes turned the grin into a look more resembling determination. The Muir Snowfield is unending slope of white and scattered rock/cliffs. The clouds came back, the wind picked up, the feet acted up, the headache acted out. Paul and I were following Marty’s tracks into the snowy something. Rory was back somewhere in the snowy something following our tracks.

It was at this point I heard a crack that sounded like thunder, then, CRASH! Snow and ice had dislodged somewhere, where picking up speed and volume, and rushing down the mountain. This was the first avalanche I had heard. I’m pretty sure it started on the Nisqually icefall off to our left, but not being able to see twenty feet in front of us didn’t calm the uneasiness of the situation.

Half an hour turned into an hour. One hour turned into two and we were still trudging up this bloody snowfield. The sun had feinted a return a few times, but the world was still grey. It felt a bit like I was in the game Mist, where the world was a puzzle that could only be worked out by dogged determination and perseverance.

Through this snowy, cloudy murkiness, we saw what appeared to be a darker, murkier spot. Hope that this was the hut quickened my painfully slow pace. The dark got darker, the murkiness dissipated, the slope steepened, and I knew we were almost there.

The Camp Muir is really a collection of scrappy looking structures clinging to the side of Rainier. It’s almost comical, but really comforting. Marty had been there, chillin’ out for a while when we arrived, and soon thereafter another party emerged out of the cloud.  Paul arrived a bit later after dragging (yes, with his hands) his snowboard the whole way up the mountain.

The end is supposed to be where the whole climb becomes worth it, but I was glad to be there just to be done! And remember, we weren’t at the summit, but rather at the 10,177 foot mark. Content to rest a bit and get back to the car, I wasn’t thinking about the beauty that was hidden by the clouds.

In true mountain weather style, the clouds suddenly broke, and the sun revealed a mountain amphitheatre replete with soaring rock spires, steep snowy slopes,  foreboding glaciers, and Adam’s peak protruding above the cloud in the distance. For most of the climb I had been in my own little bubble. Step, inhale, step, exhale. Repeat. The importance of my actions to the mountain had been further established with ascending step, but that left with the clouds. I was, once again, struck with God’s beauty, majesty, power, and my place in the whole mix. Oh yeah, and grinning like a little kid in an ice-cream shop, again. God is good.

Just as the weather broke, it could return, so we decided start our decent. This wasn’t something to be dreaded. We had five thousand vertical feet of untracked powder to descend!

Riding untracked powder is another form of bliss that I could only, speculatively compare with flying. It is magical. Perfect and soft turns, dizzying and unchecked speed, and a mind and imagination instantly freed. This lasted for the first 1500 or so vertical feet before we entered the clouds.

Knowing the inherent danger surround us, we proceeded very cautiously through the clouds, checking the GPS often and regrouping regularly. It was a painfully slow process, navigating cliffs, chutes, sink holes, and flats in low visibility, but soon enough the clouds broke again.

We finished our adventure darting through trees in perfect conditions. The parking lot came all too soon, and like all other adventures this one had finished, but not before rejuvenating the mind, body, and soul. Praise God for spontaneity, adventure, and beauty.

*Skins= a one-way material that attaches to the bottom of skis, turning them into a very quick and efficient method of ascent.