Another week, another mountain summitted for Climb For Kids. This past weekend a group of 8 climbers and 4 guides ascended Mt. Rainier in an effort to raise money and awareness for fetal syndromes. Unlike other CFK climbs this year, we had a couple of extra special surprises on this trip. UrsusFilms tagged along to film a documentary about our story as did Luke Deucy from KOMO News. It was pretty odd having a camera rolling each time you wiped your nose or told a bad joke. More than once the camera caught me doing something inappropriate, I'm sure.
Anyway, the team was really strong even though it spanned a wide range of experience. Each person brought their own style to climbing, and in the end their individual styles were all good enough to touch the highest point in Washington State. As an experienced climber, I felt like the old man in a group of newbies. In that respect it was fun to provide my little tips and tricks to others about what to expect and how to deal with the conditions. The mountain was very broken up due to the extended heat spell we have been having, thus huge crevasses were the norm. In fact high camp was surrounded by these mammoth holes that were just waiting to gobble up tired climbers.
The days leading up to the event were gorgeous and provided excellent views from the mountain. As our summit day grew nearer the clouds starting coming in. When it was time to climb to the top, a lenticular cloud formed over the mountain. Each of us pushed on harder and harder til we reached 13,500 feet. Our fun news reporter got sick, but after a little encouragement from me, he kept on going to the top. Meanwhile, I worked with our documentary crew to provide a perspective of how I was feeling. With the sun coming up, the first thing that popped into my head was one of Emma's favorite songs by the Beatles, "Here comes the sun." It felt good, like a celebration of life instead of mourning what could have been. It made me think of what we were doing was going to help others celebrate life too. That was a great motivator.
As the sun came up, so did Mother Nature's sense of humor. She always seems to be against me on these events. The wind picked up so that we had a sustained 20-25 mph breeze, with gusts about 30 mph. Then ice permeated from the lenticular and we all became walking ice people. After 6 hours of climbing, we all finally reached the summit. Given the conditions we spent a total of 90 seconds up there as the ice and wind was just devastating.
In the end, we all had fun and we all summitted. KOMO got a great story out of our climb (the story won't air til sweeps week in November), UrsusFilms shot a lot of great climbing footage (even though their camera froze up on the summit) and we raised a ton of money for families who need it most. I'm ecstatic for so many reasons.
All of my photos from the climb can be found here, and I've set up a Flickr pool for the other climbers to add their photos here.
With this climb, the 2009 Climb For Kids climbing season is over. A huge thanks to all who participated, and to our sponsors Black Diamond, Patagonia and unnamed beverage that rhymes with "dead rule".
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