Yes, Mountaineer is a real word. And yes, it's the story of Mount Adams.
Sometimes there just is no way to know what something will be like until you do it. You can think about studying abroad for years, apply for a program, plan your trip, but no amount of research will prepare you for the moment when you get into that cab, and for the first time, have to speak Spanish to an actual Spaniard. Heat. Nerves on end. Will I die in this cab? You can sign up for a half marathon, read everything everyone says about running 13.1 miles, put your time and energy into training, but you cannot know what it will be, 12 miles in, as the sun rises while the crowd cheers you on. Tears and laughter. Euphoria and strength. You can decide to move to a new city, the biggest and farthest one you can find, one you've seen on TV thousands of times, but nothing can prepare you for unpacking your life in 88 degree humidity until you live it. WTF world? Possibility. Ah, so this is freedom.
These things cannot be intellectually reasoned, they must be felt.
My climb up Mount Adams was like these experiences. It was something I couldn't prepare for despite all of my efforts, and something that changed what I thought was possible for my life.
My preparation went like this: Learn my friends were climbing a mountain. Decide to join them. Hike Mailbox Peak. Become a hiker. Hike to Camp Muir. Not so bad. Spend two hours in REI buying gear. Almost back out of trip. Send 40 texts comparing gear with friend's gear. Go back to to REI. Stuff gear into backpack. Success. Debate start times, campsites, car pools in endless group text. But really, should I be doing this? Drive to mountain. Register at Ranger Station. Freak out that they don't come to look for you unless your emergency contact calls them. Don't tell Mom. Drive up 5,000 feet to trail head. Am I even capable of this? Suit up. Gear on. Ready to go. Thunderstorm. No wait... that wasn't part of the plan.
The original plan was to hike 4 miles (~2,000 feet of elevation) in, to a campsite called lunch counter, stay the night and continue the climb the next day, going up another 2 miles (and ~4,000 feet of elevation) and then all the way back down. This sounded like a nice safe plan. The hike would be challenging, but I'd get a chance to rest in the middle. If it was too hard, I didn't have to keep going, I could always wait for the others at the campsite. Safe, full of backup plans and options to chicken out. But Mother Nature was having none of my excuses. 'Bullshit', she said. 'I'm going to send in a Thunderstorm to ruin your afternoon hike and then you will get your ass up at 2:30 am and march it up the mountain like a real Mountaineer'. At this point I reassured myself I'd quit in the morning, and set my alarm for 2:30 am.
Well, I didn't quit. I didn't think a whole lot either. I didn't want to give myself time for logic to creep in.
The first two hours of the hike were pitch black. The six of us walked in single file line with headlamps on up a rocky path towards the mountain. Part of what makes Mount Adams difficult is the sheer amount of miles (12 round trip). With some other mountains you can drive in closer to the start, but we had two hours of rocky pitch black hiking to do before we could even start the real climb. This was a first for me, waking up in the middle of the night to hike (they call this an alpine start, and it's pretty common for mountain climbing because it means you get to the top before the snow starts to get soft and melty from the sun). But somehow, the movement gave me confidence. We were done preparing, done worrying, done watching it rain, done not sleeping on the ground. Now it was time for the doing. The doing, which I thought would be the worst part, was somehow not.
My favorite thing about Seattle is the light. We live on the western edge of the pacific time zone and pretty far north. Which means that every day of a Seattle summer starts with light creeping over the horizon before 5:00 am and ends with the last rays of sun going down past 10:00 pm. Now the inverse is true in winter, but this is a summer story. The morning of August 5th I watched the sun come up at 5:00 am as we reached the snow field on Mount Adams.
Again, a moment of doubt rose in me, fear. Could I really do this? I'd made it through the hike, but I'd hiked before. Now was the real test, snow. There was nothing to do but find out. We sat down, took off our hiking boots, put on our Mountaineering boots (special boots made for Mountain climbing), put on our crampons. I'd practiced this in my room the night before we left, but I had not practiced on the edge of dawn on the side of a mountain with the wind whipping around me and my fingers going numb. I was so cold that as soon as I got my boots on I headed up the mountain, knowing that my faster companions would quickly catch up.
That first step on snow was marvelous. It was EASY. Instead of carefully placing my feet down on rocky paths I could just set them down wherever I wanted to, because spikes! I think I may have finally let out a breath I'd been holding for days. Because at that moment I knew I could actually make it up the Mountain. Now of course it got harder. Those first few steps were not very steep and I still had a lot of energy left in me. But it also got easier, because knowing I was capable made the whole thing a matter of endurance, not a matter of question. I told myself, at the end of the day I would be sleeping in my bed that night, I just had a little walking to do between then and now.
It took us 13 hours to get up and down that mountain. And I'll spoil the surprise now, but getting to the top was not the hardest part. But, I don't want it to take 13 hours for you to read about it so I'll give you the highlights:
- Feeling the sun warm me as I stepped slow and steady up the steep face
- The joy of realizing I was actually fit enough to do this, something that would not have been true a summer before
- Reaching the false summit, the steepest/hardest part of the climb
- Passing people along the way (!)
- Knowing the hardest part was over (or so I thought at the time)
- Reaching the actual summit, yea!
- Watching the magnificence of the clouds at the top as they shifted and rolled out around Mt Rainier, Hood, and Baker
- Taking victory photos at the top
- Eating prosciutto before heading back down - best fat I've ever tasted in my life
- Glacading down the mountain
I'll pause here to explain glacading for those of you who don't know what it is. Essentially it is sledding (on your backside) down the mountain you just climbed up. And also, it's so freaking fun that it's definitely the reason people climb up these things to begin with. To assist us in our glacading efforts we had brought heavy duty black garbage bags, which we cut holes in for our feet and sat in (like giant diapers). Since we weren't the first people back down the mountain there were already trails through the snow, tiny half pipes that wound their way down the mountain. All we had to do was sit on the path, dig our ice axes in to act as breaks, and slide off the edge of a mountain. It's basically the best slide you've ever been on. It took us about 30 minutes to go down what had taken us nearly 3 hours to get up. Yea - that part is a little depressing.
So there you have it, the highlights! But wait, you ask. You are still on the mountain, what about the rest of the adventure? Well the rest of the adventure contained a few of the low lights:
- Wondering if we'd ever get off of that snow field, how much farther?
- The relief of getting off the snow, only to remember that hiking was slower...
- Oh, and we still had 4 miles of that to do before we made it back to the car
- Rocks on the trail
- No really - imagine that after 11 hours of effort, you have to spend another 2 hours hiking and that EVERY SINGLE step you take you have to watch for a rock to make sure you don't twist your ankle
- By the way, it's hot now
- And now you've walked 12 hours and you have 1 more to go... with ROCKS.
- Seriously, someone literally took a perfectly good path (that looks like it used to be a road) and dumped rocks on them to make it more difficult to walk on.
- WHY??
That last hour, half hour, fifteen minutes, five minutes... The closer we got to the end the more unbearable it was that we were not, in fact, done. It's not even the physical exhaustion, I was tired, but I hadn't really let myself feel it yet (not like I did when I sat down in the car for an hour and then tried to get up to walk into a gas station). It's mental. I felt like I couldn't bare to be in my head another second, my brain was so bored of walking it would take any distraction. But I was all out of thoughts. All I had was getting to the next step.
And so, it was the last step that was the hardest for me. Scaling 6,000 vertical feet that day was challenging, but in a way that made me feel strong. Taking the last step to the car was challenging, in a way that made me feel like I was losing my sanity. As I'm sure my friends would be willing to attest.
Friends: 'Kelsey, the rocks on the path at the end really weren't that bad.'
Me: 'These rocks were hand placed on that path to give me pain. I hate every rock that has ever existed. And I will proceed to throw a verbal tantrum about it.'
Sometimes there just is no way to know what something will be like until you do it. You can go on practice hikes to train, you can spend an ungodly amount of money at REI to arm yourself with the best gear, you can almost back out 3-4 times, but you cannot know what it feels like to climb 8 hours to the top and know you have more in you until you've done it. I can do difficult things. Ah, so this is freedom.
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