#mount rainier camp muir weather forecast

[mountrainiernps]

“If you don’t like the weather, wait 5 minutes.”

Truer words may never have been spoken about springtime in the Cascade Mountains.

The only thing you can really count on with our weather is that the weather will change. We can go from blue sky to white-out in 5 minutes. It might get worse, it might get better, but the weather on this mountain is always interesting.

So before you drive out to visit the national park, please check the weather forecast and prepare for the possibilities. When you get to the park, you might check again at the visitor center or information center. Then, while you’re out having fun, watch the weather. If it starts to change, be prepared to adjust your plans.

In the Spring, I have counted 136 different kinds of weather inside of 24 hours. – Mark Twain

Park information on weather can be found here  https://www.nps.gov/mora/planyourvisit/weather.htm For a view of current conditions, these webcams may be helpful https://www.nps.gov/mora/learn/photosmultimedia/webcams.htm  Park information on winter safety can be found here https://www.nps.gov/mora/planyourvisit/winter-safety.htm 

These photos are from years past and do not reflect current conditions. NPS Photo. Mount Rainier with high clouds viewed from Longmire. Snowbank in foreground. March 2021. NPS/S. Redman Photo. Clouds around Tatoosh Mountains with snow. Silhouette of evergreens and two ravens on a dead tree in the foreground. December 2010. NPS Photo. View looking up the Carbon Glacier. Clouds obscure most of the mountain with Liberty Cap (14,122 feet) visible above. July 2004. NPS Photo. View looking down on buildings of Camp Muir and Muir Snowfield. Light dusting of snow. Clouds obscure features below. June 1968.

[dwyguyhikes]

Mt. Rainier

Paradise to Camp Muir:  4,788 ft gain in 5:49

Camp Muir to Summit:  4,222 ft gain in 5:50

Final elevation: 14,410 ft

Link: https://www.alltrails.com/trail/us/washington/mount-rainier-standard-summit-route

Buckle up for this one because it’s going to be a long one.

I was supposed to climb Mt. Rainier last year, but the trip got canceled because of COVID. I knew this was going to be one of my toughest highpoints to check off, and I wanted to use it as an opportunity to learn as much as possible to learn about alpine and glacier traveling. RMI Expeditions offered a 5-day program with multiple days of training, so I knew it was the perfect route for me to go.

I got picked up in Seattle by some other people on the trip, and we made our way to basecamp in Ashford. The first day was just orientation and gear check. I had to rent a few pieces of equipment, but most of the stuff on the list I either had already or was able to borrow from Nick back in Salt Lake. Some interesting gear that I didn’t have any prior experience with were crampons, double leather boots, gaiters, and an ice axe.

We also met our lead guide, Jenny, on the first day. All I can say about Jenny is that she’s a total badass, and I knew that she was going to get us up and down that mountain safely. Our team had 8 climbers not including the guides: Chris, Minia, Jim, Jason, Jamie, Ricky, Eli, and myself.

Once we had all our gear sorted out and learned the best way to stuff it all into a backpack, we broke for the day. I was staying at a campsite only a few miles away, so I headed there to try and rest up for the big days to come. Conveniently, this campsite featured a bird that constantly pecked at the metal roof of the building in the center of the camp as well as a small army of screaming children with their parents’ Trump flags billowing in the wind. Terrific stuff.

Day 2 was a training day. We went to a snowy part near the bottom of the mountain and learned how to walk up and down hills with crampons, self and team arrest with an ice axe, anchor an ice spike, and walk as a team of 4 people. On Rainier, we’d be tethered together for nearly the whole climb. There needs to be 30 ft of rope between each person because that’s how wide the crevasses are on the mountain in case someone falls in. Jamie also shared that she had fallen into a crevasse while trying to climb Mt. Baker, so the dangers of the climb were starting to become more and more apparent.

We also got to meet our second guide, Steve, who used to be a pro hockey player and is missing his two front teeth to prove it. He actually plays now for the Idaho team in the BDHL, which I’m trying to play for in Park City. Small world!

After minimal training I still felt incredibly unprepared, but that didn’t matter because we were climbing anyways. The next day, we met a Paradise parking lot at around 9 am and started our climb! Our goal for that day was to get to Camp Muir, where we’d be staying for our nights on the mountain. It has a bunkhouse for us to sleep in as well as tents for the unvaxxed folks.

The hike up to Camp Muir was a slog and gave us a taste of exactly how difficult this climb would be. Steep hills and slushy snow made for some tough terrain, but it was nothing we couldn’t handle. We all walked in a straight line, with each person kick-stepping into the previous person’s footprints. This meant the last person in line had practically a staircase for all the steep hills. Imagine climbing a 5,000 ft high staircase with a 40 lb backpack on your back, and that’s roughly what our experience was like. Chris ended up falling way behind and Eli pulled something in his leg about 75% of the way up, and it was tough to see team members fall off like that.

I think the worst part was that everything seemed deceptively close. When we caught out first glimpse of Camp Muir, it looked like it was 5 minutes away. Wrong! We still had another hour to go after seeing it. That bit was demoralizing.

Eventually we all made it to Camp Muir and claimed our spots in the bunkhouse. The guides provided hot water for our meals and prepared us for the next day. Based on the weather forecast, our best chance to summit would be the next day. This means waking up at 12:30 am and heading out of camp at 2 am, so we all headed to bed straight after dinner. The elevation and general excitement/anxiety led me to get MAYBE an hour of sleep before the guides came roaring in at 12:30 to wake us up. They said it was pretty normal to not sleep the night before the climb, but that didn’t make me feel any less tired.

Chris and Eli weren’t fit to climb, so we departed as a team of 6 with our guides. With only our headlamps to guide us, all you could really do was keep your head down and look at your feet. We had to conserve energy by rest-stepping into the footprints of the person in front of you. I started out on a rope with Jenny and Minia, and Jenny set us off into the darkness with a nice, slow pace.

We crossed Cowlitz Glacier and then made it to Ingraham Glacier. The scariest part was crossing some pretty narrow bridges over crevasses. I tried not to think about the fact that you couldn’t see the bottom when you looked down them and just focused on putting one foot in front of the other. After crossing the glaciers, we took our first break after about an hour. We put our parkas on to stay warm and tried our best to force food and water down. It’s crazy how hard it is to eat at that elevation. This was also where Minia decided she couldn’t go any further, so one of the guides took her back and we changed up our rope teams. Now we’re down to 5 members.

The next bit was absolutely debilitating. We had to ascend Disappointment Cleaver (cleaver? I barely know her), which was a rocky section full of switchbacks. Normally I feel pretty at-home while scrambling over rocks, but doing it in crampons with full backpacks and no light was terrible. All I tried to do was focus on my breathing and ignore the grating sounds of metal spikes on rocks. I was tied in with Ricky for this part, and I could tell he was having a hard time. After about an hour and half of climbing, we sat down for our second break and had a breathtaking view of the sunrise. That view alone almost made the cleaver worth it, but I can barely put into words how much that part sucked.

Break passed quickly, and before we could start up again Jim decided that he couldn’t go any further. Jenny made the executive decision to call it for Ricky too, so they both tied up with another guide and started heading back down. Now there were only 3 of our original team left: Jason, Jamie, and myself. We all tied in with Jenny and became the J-Line (since, ya know, my middle name is John…)

The next bit I could only describe as a seemingly never-ending staircase. At this elevation, every step becomes a struggle. Our pace is slow but steady, I’d say we’re taking roughly one step every two seconds. Try that out for a quick second to understand just how slow our pace needed to be to be sustainable.

The last leg really took its toll on Jamie who was in the back. I was trying to crack jokes to keep team morale high, but everyone was getting their ass kicked by this crazy mountain. After what felt like an eternity of climbing, we eventually reach the crater at the top of the mountain. The crater is considered the summit, but the true summit was about another 30 minute hike past this point. I was so excited and full of adrenaline that I practically ran toward it. Jamie and Jason stayed behind, content with the crater, so I ended up being the only person of my 8 person team to reach the true summit.

I snapped some pictures up there (and recorded a quick clip for my next Survivor application) before starting to feel light-headed and heading back to the team on the crater. Little did I know that my rushing to the true summit would lead to a truly miserable descent: my trip to the top meant that I didn’t get a break like the rest of the team. As soon as I made it back to the crater, I had about 2 minutes of sitting before it was time to head down. We were in a time crunch because some unusual heat was going to produce bad descent conditions, so we needed to leave before it got too bad. I thought I’d be ok with a super short break, but boy was I wrong.

The heat, the elevation, and the exhaustion proceeded to destroy my body on the descent. My head hurt, my body ached, and I started to get tunnel vision. I had to keep telling myself “the only way off this mountain is down, and you sure as hell can’t afford a copter ride out of here.” I was stumbling all over the place and started getting really scared that things were going to end badly.

Pure grit got me to the first break, where I felt nauseous and could barely eat or drink. I put away as much water as I could, which made me feel only slighter better. Still, the only way off was down, and it was time for Disappointment Cleaver round two.

Downhill rocks with crampons on felt like a living nightmare. I was slipping a ton and I was walking in a daze. It felt like a miracle when we finally made it through and returned to the snow. This came with its own frustrations, as Jason and I kept post-holing waist deep into the snow. I wanted to shout and cry and just lay down every time this happened. My morale never felt lower.

I think one of my favorite things about hiking is just the simplicity of it. All you do is put left foot over right foot over left foot until you make it to your destination. The best I could do was focus on this as we continued our descent to Camp Muir. When we finally rounded the corner and saw it, I nearly wept. I felt terrible: I was out of water, my head was throbbing, my clothes were soaked from sweat, and my feet felt like they were about to fall off. The final steps into camp had me on the brink of collapsing.

I immediately rushed into the bunkhouse to take off my layers and try to hydrate and cool down. I laid in my bunk for a couple hours but didn’t feel any better. I was guzzling water but wasn’t peeing, which had me worried. I felt nauseous and dizzy and couldn’t cool down. Jenny came to check on me, and said that I probably had heat exhaustion, which is crazy to think of when you’re on a mountain covered in snow. She said that all the water I drank was diluting my body, and that my body was probably starved of electrolytes. She made me a quesadilla and brought me a Gatorade as I continued laying in bed.

After trying unsuccessfully to sleep it off, I went outside and proceeded to immediately throw up everything. The liter and a half of water I had drank since we got back came spewing out. The good thing is that this helped with my nausea! I still felt like ass, though. I went back into the bunkhouse and tried to sip the Gatorade and nibble the quesadilla as much as my body would allow me. Luckily, I was able to get a bit of a nap in too. I had gone the last 30 or so hours on only an hour of sleep, and my body was not happy about it.

The nap + Gatorade + quesadilla combo helped me to feel a lot better. It still felt like a struggle to get anything into my body. The rest of the team met with the guides to learn some knots since we had time to kill, but I didn’t have any strength to get out of bed. That was a low moment for me.

Night finally fell and it felt like a miracle that I was able to get some sleep. The wind was howling all night and there was a symphony of snoring coming from the other bunks. I woke up around 4 am and actually felt moderately ok, so I think my body was finally recovering.

I kept sleeping on and off until it got to be about time to go. We packed everything up and it was finally time to get the hell off this mountain. The Camp Muir to Paradise hike was almost enjoyable even. It was all downhill so we kept a good pace, and there were tons of “luge” spots where you could slide down on your ass. That’s my kind of descent.

After about 2 hours, we finally made it to the pavement of the Paradise parking lot, and I wanted to kiss the ground. We headed back to Ashford to return our rental gear and celebrate with our team over some beer and burgers.

Man, what an incredible experience this trip was! I loved how much fun our team was and how knowledgeable the guides were. We all kept each other in good spirits, and I got up and down the mountain (mostly) safely. That’s all I could really ask for. All in all, though, I think I’m ok to not do any more hikes for a little while. Only 48 more highpoints to go!