Hike to Rainier’s Camp Muir leaves stiff muscles, big smiles
Published 5:22 pm Friday, September 26, 2008
If Mount Rainier were in Austria instead of Washington state, I likely would have explored it long ago.
All my life, I’ve watched it shimmering Fuji-like on Seattle’s horizon, and have never driven the hour off the interstate to actually take a hike there.
This month, back home between trips to Europe, that finally changed. A family friend, Sherri, decided to celebrate her 50th birthday with a group hike to Camp Muir, Mount Rainier’s base camp at 10,400 feet, and my wife, Anne, and I joined her gang on the climb.
On a gloriously sunny mid-September morning, nine of us suited up in the parking lot at Paradise Lodge in Mount Rainier National Park.
I’d never done a serious hike up a mountain, so the gear was a mystery to me: gaiters to keep the snow out of my shoes, ski poles to navigate fields of ankle-breaking rocks, and sunglasses (vital for hiking on snow and ice).
I loaded up with the prescribed 2.5 liters of water and wrapped my toes prophylactically: In their white tape they looked like little hostages. It was probably best they didn’t know where I was taking them.
Ahead of us lay a nine-mile hike with a 5,000-foot elevation gain. This meant we would be gaining one mile in altitude in 4.5 miles of uphill climbing. I thought: I’m climbing, then descending a staircase a mile high.
The first half of the hike took us to Pebble Creek, a steep path surrounded by meadows. We saw deer, marmot and chipmunks, and stopped to chat with Dale Thompson, a 76-year-old man who looked 60. A retired ranger, he entertained us with thrilling stories of a lifetime spent working and playing on this mountain.
The last mile was exhausting.
Step after step I trudged, staring at my shadow in the snow. Slow, small steps to avoid sliding back on the ice.
Breathe loudly, Dale Thompson had advised (“None of this macho holding your breath”).
In Europe there would have been a gondola to the summit — here you have to earn it. Not in mountain-climbing shape, I enjoyed plenty of re-energizing “savor-the-view” stops.
Horizontal fissures marked the last stretch of our hike to Camp Muir. We crossed them where the ice seemed to be strongest. At one point, a distressed man came through the snowfield toward us.
“Be careful of the crevasses,” he warned.
He told us he had crashed through the ice, catching himself just in time, the lower half of his body dangling over a crevasse. After we left him, we came across a hole in the ice three feet around. He must have made it.
Six hours after setting out, we arrived at Camp Muir, a shanty hamlet of three or four mountain huts where, for a century, people have slept before summiting Rainier.
The best thing about the place is the commanding view and the feeling of accomplishment, as a novice, to be here at all. Most people’s Camp Muir memory includes the smell of sewage. My memory is of a tumbling boulder.
As we began our descent, we made our way across the ice field below Camp Muir. Steep and slippery, it’s dotted with volcanic boulders — some as large as four or five feet wide.
Suddenly, we felt, then heard, and then saw a huge boulder bouncing demonically down the mountain right at us. Clearly, the rock would have killed whomever it hit.
It was bouncing like a goofy football and could go potluck in any direction. We scrambled to the side and it bounced by us, getting as much air as a tumbling beach ball. Gathering our wits, all we wanted was to cross those crevasses and get back down.
After hopping and sliding past the crevasses, we picked our way down between ice fields and broken rocks. When we reached a sleddable snowfield, we would crack open our big black garbage bags, hold them between our legs like diapers, and scoot, laughing, down the mountain.
Just as the purples and golds of sunset hit the mountain, we reached the lodge.
With four scraped knees, two scraped elbows and nine big smiles among us, we were thankful to be off the mountain in one piece. Stretching out on a split-log bench, under the sturdy eaves of our circa-1920 mountain lodge, I felt wonderfully stiff.
Looking back up at the mountain, I was glad I had skipped two days of work to enjoy the best birthday party of my life.
And from now on, when I marvel at our Seattle views of Mount Rainier, it will come with rich memories and a new understanding of why many find religion on Rainier.
Rick Steves (www.ricksteves.com) writes European travel guidebooks and hosts travel shows on public television and public radio. E-mail him at rick@ricksteves.com, or write to him c/o P.O. Box 2009, Edmonds, WA 98020.
Tribune Media Services
