"Nice marmot!": Mounting Rainier

“Bah-loop.”

My head jerked up from the keyboard and I looked nervously behind me, stilling my paranoid urge to grab my phone and throw it in the trashcan before anyone noticed the new hire who not only brought her personal cell phone to work, but also forgot to silence it. This is my first job in an office and I am just trying to keep my head down and not do anything to get me noticed, like a student in a middle school classroom. Or cafeteria. Or anywhere.

Instead I forced myself to casually reach out and silence it, then opened a file drawer to put it out of the reach of temptation, taking one quick sidelong glance at the screen.

The text was from my boyfriend, and simply said “So...”

Now, I challenge anyone who gets that text to put their phone in a locked drawer for the duration of the workday. I wavered. Then, underneath, another ellipsis popped up, this one moving in the “I’m typing something really important that can’t possibly wait until 5 o’clock” way. Game over.

I shut the drawer, took another look behind me, and sat staring at the waving ellipsis. It went away, popped up, went away again. I took a long drink of water, tensed and held my breath. The bubble popped up and stayed.

“Were you serious about wanting to climb Rainier?”  

Six months before, my boyfriend and two close friends made plans to climb this peak. And six months before, I simultaneously dedicated myself to learning all of the most horrific stories about the mountain, because if I was going to be widowed, I at least wanted to be informed. I am a prepare for the worst kind of person. The glass is definitely half-empty, and the liquid is vinegar. But I might have let it slip that I was also slightly jealous of the trip.

And now I was being offered a spot to conquer the monster I had created in my head.

I responded with the first objection I could think of.

“I don’t have any warm socks.”

Really? That was the best I could do? Nothing about the fact that Mt. Rainier is a volcano covered in ice?

With those kind of objections I was obviously quickly talked down, and I found myself with six days to prepare myself mentally and physically to climb 14,410’ up that volcano covered in ice.

  

Over the next few days, between realizing that I don’t actually own ANY warm clothing and the highest peak I’ve ever reached is probably the observation tower of the Empire State Building,  I found myself responding to my mother’s objections with all the arguments from my friends that I had scoffed at previously. Fortunately my mother didn’t discover what had been my trump card: the volcano bit.

This was still more than slightly worrisome to me, even though positions had changed. The argument that the experts know far in advance when volcanos are going to erupt was not comforting for two reasons: Highlights Magazine and Pompeii. In the latter I had read a story (circa second grade) about the eruption of Mt. St. Helen, and my main takeaway from the article was that lots of people died. Granted, I was always more interested in the compelling life of the Timbertoes, or the antics of Goofus and Gallant, than I was about the science articles, which is probably why I missed the fact that the people who died in that eruption were people that refused to leave their homes, notwithstanding the best efforts of the National Guard. But Pompeii! All those people enveloped in ash! That example proved to be misleading as well. Those people were not too bright, actually, since apparently Vesuvius had been having tiny eruptions for days previously. I guess that’s what happens when you think there’s just a divine blacksmith inside the mountain making magical armor.

 

DAY ONE:

We will skip the part about my boyfriend having to buy me two plane tickets to Seattle because it still makes me a little ill in the stomach and go directly to DAY ONE, starting with breakfast at the Highlander, which appeared to be the only food establishment within 20 miles of where we were staying. It also functioned as a saloon, poolroom, ice cream parlor, discotheque, karaoke bar, lending library, possibly a daycare and definitely a laundromat. I would not be surprised if they also hold church services there on Sunday.

From the best greasy spoon breakfast, we headed to the rental company, where I rented everything because, as I can’t emphasize enough, I have never done anything even remotely resembling mountain climbing (I don’t think hiking to a spot in the woods to drink away from your dry-campus in any way counts). These few hours consisted in a continuous series of tiny mental explosions on my part  (“Walk up this 60* angle to test your boots.” “Is this about as steep as it gets on the mountain?” “Yea, no...you probably won’t find an angle this slight.” …. “So this ice axe, it’s basically for stability?” “Sure, or stopping yourself if you slip into a crevasse.” …. “Do I really need to rent the headlamp?” “Yea, you’ll definitely need it when you start the summit climb at midnight.” “!!!”), and a stream of comments about shoe size on the boys’ part.

After renting our gear, we settled into some comfortable chairs and met our team: fellow climbers and guides. Good thing those chairs were so deep, because my body was almost completely inside it by the end of the introductions. Tyler, our lead guide, asked us to start off by telling our names and something about our climbing experience. Ian and Bill had each climbed the mountain twice already, Zach and Anna were highschool athletes and had that awful elasticky glow of youth that says “I can stay up all night watching Netflix, climb a mountain, and still love myself,” Darren looked like he might actually be the IronMan. In my mind I heard the sharp voice of that British lady with the pointy cheekbones speaking directly to me, “You ARE theweakestlink. Goodbye.”

I came away from the orientation with my head swimming but with two thoughts impressed on my brain: I would not, under any circumstances, be constrained to heed the call of nature on the climb, and I could eat whatever I wanted over the next 4 days.

“There are three food groups on the mountain: fat, sugar, and salt,” Tyler told us. “Eat what you like. You may wonder, does a Cliffbar still taste like sawdust when it is frozen at 14,411 feet? 100%. I go for M&Ms, myself.”  What was this magical place we had stumbled upon, and why was I still living in a world where ice cream was considered “inappropriate” for breakfast?

Tyler also gave us some tips for places to eat before we took on the mountain. “If you’re looking for a watering hole,” staring directly at us, possibly because my friend had inadvisably mentioned that his training had consisted in walking back and forth from the bars, “there’s the lodge here on campus, or if you’re trying to class it up, the Elbe Tavern.”

 

As I came to find out, Tyler’s conversation was always an equal mix of sincere truths and blatant absurdities, all delivered in the same pleasant monotone and indistinguishable from each other. Unfortunately we hadn’t figured this out yet, and rolled up to the Elbe Tavern for dinner in good faith. We did not stay. Although we did consider buying some lottery tickets from the massive display behind the bar.

Instead we ate dinner in an old train car. I mean, one that had been converted into a restaurant - we didn’t just find an old train car and shack up there (although even that might have been an improvement on the Elbe tavern). Our waitress told us sotto voce that the best place to eat in Elbe was at Scaly Burger, but somehow those two words together did not conjure up an appetizing image,

so we stuck with the train.

My smoked, fried chicken was pretty good, despite its identity crisis, and “Grandma’s Lasagna” was also decent, although I really couldn’t say if it lived up to the name as I have no grandmother’s lasagna to compare it to. My Dad’s mom was too tired of raising 9 kids to make lasagna, and my Mom’s mom is Irish. So.

(*Dede, if you’re reading this, forgive me. You are a fantastic cook and your stuffed shells are a dream.)

But what I was most excited about were the special “housemade” garlic fries. I had basically just been given carte blanche by Tyler to indulge my every epicurean desire, and in the Emily McBryan alternative food pyramid, french fries occupy the foundational part.

Have you ever gotten a Philly cheesesteak at Subway? You get a microwaved steak sandwich with a two slices of white American cheese rubberly rested on top. This is your fault, because you ordered a Philly cheesesteak, at a Subway.

I don’t see how I could have been even a little bit at fault in the garlic fries situation, and yet I had a similar reaction. There was garlic on them to be sure - but minced and dumped on top. And while I have always maintained that aioli is just a fancy name for mayonnaise, I now realize that there is a HUGE difference.

Dear reader. I still ate every one of those fries.

We stopped at the Highlander again for ice cream on the way back. 24 flavors of homemade soft serve! People came from miles around to get it (this did not seem to be a big selling point to me, seeing as people have to come from miles around if they want to go anywhere in this place)! I was scarred by my experience with the garlic fries. Somehow ordering “homemade tiramisu soft serve” seemed to be asking for it, like getting lobster at a diner. I stuck to vanilla, and eavesdropped as a local told his life story to my boyfriend. We stayed until the man started talking about the calls his wife made to 911 about the “pushing”. He turned reassuringly to me and winked, “It happened all the time.”  I wasn’t sure if this referred to the calls or the pushing, and either way the wink was disturbing, but we didn’t stay to find out.

DAY 2:

 

Snow school, or the One where I am instilled with false confidence.

After the first few marches through the snow on our training day I felt pretty good about my chances for getting up the mountain. I don’t know what I was so worried about. I do walk my dog up a positively steep hill every day (well, every day that I don’t take alternate routes to avoid the hill – which is probably one out of every…five). And since I found out I was going on this climb six days previously, I had been taking the stairs at work. Although I would usually forget to take them up, so generally it was downhill practice. And I actually only worked three of those six days.

On this day we learned how to arrest ourselves with our ice axes. This became the substance of my nightmares for the next three nights. Self-arrest begins with hurling yourself uphill, on TOP of your ice axe.  With my gracefulness I was equally likely to die by impalement as by falling down the face of the mountain, so it was more a matter of choosing the least worst end. At least in the first instance, I wouldn’t take out the three other people clipped onto me too. So I determined on death by impalement.

Tyler was our captain and mountain guru, and I would trust my poorly prepared life to him any time. He talked in a continuous stream of folklore, jokes, personal anecdotes, and gentle criticisms, every once in a while inserting an expletive for emphasis with an almost apologetic tone. His personality was easy and friendly, and most of the time he seemed more than half asleep - his climbing up the mountain would more accurately be described as a “stroll.”

But under the sleepy exterior the man was sharper than an ice pick, and if any fool disrespected the mountain he went into full on transformer mode. In our practice with the avalanche transceivers, one climber was not paying attention, and suddenly sparks flashed from under Tyler’s sleepy lids. “Your friend is now dead under the snow,” he snapped, reaching out angrily for the transceiver and flipping it on. Thrusting it back, he turned to me lazily and smiled, “See that marmot? You know it’s just a baby grizzly.” I laughed, but nervously, and silently resolved to never provoke the man. It was also at this point that I felt like I could entrust my life and the lives of all of my dearest ones to his care.

 

“Check out the wildlife, gang!” He drew our attention to a string of tourists laboring up the hill and softly chuckled. “Sheep. They see one person going one way and they just follow them! Those skiers…” he shook his head. “Where did they come from?” asked Bill. Tyler looked at him gravely. “The sky. But the elk come from down here. They used to be deer. Change into elk at higher elevations.”

Of course, I wasn’t fooled by this, mostly because I had been burned before. In college, some Californian classmate took advantage of my Philadelphian’s limited experience with citrus to convince me that limes are just unripe lemons. The argument becomes much more convincing when you’ve only ever seem them in a grocery store, just saying.  

When we got to the bottom of the mountain I was feeling so good that even though I hadn’t been there, done that, I went ahead and bought the tee shirt.

DAYS 3&4 (This was basically a continuous day in my mind)

I started the climb with all the confidence of the previous day. That is, until someone put a 35lb pack on my back, started steadily taking all my oxygen away, and seemingly filled my legs with lead. It also turns out that an exclusively candy diet is not all it’s cracked up to be. By the end of the first climb, I found myself unconsciously salivating watching one of the guides eat a slice of turkey deli meat, fortunately closing my mouth before he noticed my glassy, predatory stare.

I realized it was going to take a lot more than M&Ms to get me to the top of the mountain. I recited rosary after rosary to the beat of my steps, interrupted by U2’s “Elevation” on repeat in the background of my thoughts, or Jim Carrey’s voice saying “You’re getting to the top of this mountain, Mister, broken legs and all.” Occasionally I would also encourage myself to “remember your training” and then immediately try to put that out of my mind, because when you haven’t done any, that’s more of a death knell than a cheering thought. If I remembered my training, I’d be in a fetal position at the bottom of the mountain. So Bono, Truman Burbank and the Blessed Virgin Mary are more or less equally responsible for my success in reaching base camp.

Steve (another guide) broke through my concentration to talk to me about life. It felt exactly like when the dentist has your mouth propped open with a piece of metal scraping against your teeth and chooses that moment to ask you what you’re learning in math class. That is primarily why I haven’t been to the dentist in 15 years. It’s embarrassing. I don’t know anything about math.

I felt like yelling at him, “Dude! do I look like I have oxygen to spare for a casual chat?” But then he got me talking about literature and of course I can always find oxygen to spare to talk about that. Too much, depending on who you ask. Sneaky move, Steve, sneaky move

.  

When we reached base camp at around 3:30 in the afternoon, Tyler sat down with us to talk us through the next part of the climb. At the end of the conversation, I knew that not even the entire U2 catalogue could get me to the summit of the mountain, but I was game to see how far I could gut it out, despite the fact the altitude had just recently placed a vise around my head and seemed also to be slowly pressing a steel poker against the back of my neck.

The summit climb was to begin at 11:30 pm (thus the headlamp), so now it was time to try to recharge and sleep.

First you are forced to stuff yourself with more calories than a McDonald’s Big Breakfast with Hotcakes (1090, in case you wondered), and then you have to fit yourself into a sleeping bag designed for Twiggy.

In response to my complaints about this situation, my boyfriend informed me that this style of sleeping bag is called a “mummy.” Awesome. As if I was not already hyper-aware of the proximity of death. Perched in a shack constructed of the most amount of plywood that new employees in the ‘70s could be constrained to lug halfway up the mountain (to help your imagination, not a lot), held up by cables against the tremendous weight of snow moving down the mountain that had permanently deformed PINE TREES, I did not need to be reminded of my mortality by sleeping in the position of eternal sleep.

We woke up in the dark to get dressed; put on harnesses, helmets, and crampons; and drink terrible instant coffee.

I used to think that nothing was worse than a morning without coffee. This is no longer a thought that I have.

The next part of the climb was the hardest, and definitely the most I have ever pushed myself physically. It was simultaneously terrifying because you couldn’t see past the person in front of you, and comforting for the same reason. At one point, I turned my head and my headlamp illuminated an enormous crevasse not 20 feet from our path - I kept my eyes down after that.

 

Just when I felt like I couldn’t push myself anymore, “20 minutes!” said Steve.

I could do that. I could do 20 minutes. It’s just mental. Pole pole (meaning, one foot after the other)!

20 minutes later, I heard Steve again, “15 minutes! We’re close.” My mental game collapsed. And fifteen minutes later, my body followed, M&Ms notwithstanding.

I thought I could gut it out until the next break, but my boyfriend’s advice was in my head. “Don’t swim out further than you can swim back.” I never really learned to swim, so this particularly resonated with me. Also there was the ice axe paranoia.

We sat for a few minutes after the others continued up the mountain, headlamps off to see the stars better, and then started back down the climb to basecamp.

The drama queen in me wants to say “treacherous climb,” but I’ll spare you the purple prose. Also, my mother is going to read this, and I want to go back some day.

*I did step into a crevasse on the way back. It was an eerie feeling - my foot shot through the snow and then seemed to dangle in air while my child-bearing hips backpack held me up on the surface. So maybe “treacherous” isn’t too far off.

Back at basecamp we watched the sun rise and I thought **insert something cheesy here about success not being measured by whether you get to the top.** Then I went back into the shack to sleep the sleep of the pretty much just.

Coming down was one long, slow, slide. Literally. Sledding down on waterproof pants was the most fun part of the trip - and scaring the marmots, of course.

**On that note, if I had a dollar for every time one of the boys quoted “Nice marmot” from the Big Lebowski, I could stand at least 6 rounds of White Russians to the entire team.

As it was, we just drank a few pitchers of beer and made many resolutions to return, which I plan on keeping (after some more frequent stair climbing).

For dinner that night, I had an Oreo milkshake and fries from Jack in the Box. The turkey could wait til tomorrow.