Green Gazelle: Camp Muir, Part 1

I’ve been planning to climb both Mt. Adams and Mt Rainier this summer, so when I found out I had Friday off, I thought a trip to Camp Muir would be great rehearsal of sorts for those two climbs.

We left my house at 0700, which turned out to be later that I would have liked. The weather had gotten in the way of climbers for a few days, and would do so again tonight. It could not have been more perfect for a day hike. It was cool, with a light breeze and only partly cloudy. There was a large lenticular cloud around the summit, which made for some good photos, then it blew away so we could see the whole mountain.

We stopped at a viewpoint to take some pictures and then went on to the Paradise lot. It was my first time seeing Paradise since the renovations, so I got a bit turned around, which impacted our trip. We started near the Paradise Inn, and it took some time to realize that I’d started us too far East, so we had to climb up a steep ridge, in 8 inch snow the whole way. After quite a bit of traffic we reached the top and got to the main bootpath heading to Muir.

The route was well flagged, and not too steep until we got to Pebble creek, just below Panorama point. This was at 7,000 feet, and from there we had only 3,100 feet on endless snow slog to go. Most of the time I looked at the ground at the view behind me. I tried not to look up. I got my steps and breathing into a good rhythm and tried to stay that way. There was always a daunting ridge in front of me. It would seem like I was getting close to the top of it, and once I did, there was another one there waiting for me to climb it.

I led most of the way, but as we got near the top, Paul passed me and I started to lag behind. The last 1000 vertical feet were brutal. My legs and calves started to hurt and I had to stop a few times to stretch them. I could see the huts, but didn’t seem to be getting any closer. In the last few hundred vertical feet, even muscles in my hips that I didn’t know I had started to hurt. I limped up to the camp and we straight into the shelter to take off my pack and get out the water and food.

The public shelter was very nice for the location. There was plenty of bunk space, and counter for cooking and shelves for gear. The bunk space was really a sheet of plywood a few inches off the floor, and another a few feet above it, but I still would have liked to spend the night. I put on my new green fleece jacket that my wife’s parents bought me, and heated some water for some water while Paul got the food. Paul and I are both from SoCal and we were amazed to meet two others in different parties from that area. One of them had run out of fuel, and so I gave him what was left from my stove.

After about an hour we left to head home. I wore my rain pants and glissaded much of the way. After the rest and food I felt better and practically jogged down much of the mountain. It’s 1am so I won’t say too much more about the descent. I did get a lot of snow in my boots. After I knew we were almost there, I climbed to the top of a hill, looked ahead and felt my heart sink when I saw we weren’t there yet. Then I looked to my left and was relieved to see the parking lot 100m away.

It was a great trip, which I thoroughly enjoyed, but I will be spending much more time at the gym and on the trail in the next few weeks. Below are lots of pictures.