Okay from the beginning - I've been planning on
climbing the North Cleaver Route on
Mt. Adams all summer and finally found the oppurtunity.
Mt. Adams is the second highest mountain
in the Cascades it is about 2000 feet shorter than Mt. Rainer. I was able to convince one other friend to come along for the adventure, my oldest friend
Dan (met Dan in 4th grade).
So on Septtember 12th, Dan and I stopped by
REI and stocked up on some
Clif Bars, Clif Gel Shots and other little accessories that would make our
trip more pleasant. We headed out to
Mt. Adams, after 3 hours of very
fun driving (really twisty roads which I couldn't resist but take the
corners a little faster than legal limits suggested). We got to the
Killen Creek Trailhead. After loading everything into our hiking
backpacks, which weighed anywhere from 25-30 lbs. we set off.
There are two routes to get to the summit of
Mt. Adams, the South Side
which is shorter and the easier of the two. And there is the North
Cleaver route, which is recommended for experts with previous experience and mountaineering skills. Which Dan and I had neither of; I'm sure you can guess which
route we took. We started our voyage at 6:30 PM and after hiking the
Killen Creek Trail for 3.1 miles which wasn't too challenging we got
to High Camp trail which was another two mile's practically straight
up, we finally stopped around 7000' feet elevation. By this time it
was dark and we had our headlamps on. It was one of those occasions
that make you very grateful to be alive and just stand in awe of the
silence, the darkness and the magnificent stars in the middle of
nowhere somewhere in the wild. I wish I was better with words so that
I can describe the feeling to you but no can do.
So after finding a flat area with a somewhat soft surface we pitched
our tent. We passed out as soon as we got into our sleeping bags (8:30
PM the earliest I have ever been to sleep since.....). We both had
trouble falling asleep because of the cold and hard ground and Dan's
occasional snoring but it didn't matter because at 5 AM we woke up,
broke down our tent and got ready to start our 4.5 mile climb to
12276' to the summit of
Mt. Adams. When we woke up it was dark and the
first 30 minutes of our hike was also in darkness so we had our
headlamps on. But we saw one of the most magnificent sunrise's.
Let me tell you a little about our tortures climb. It was the hardest
4.5 miles I have ever done, I was expecting it to be hard but nothing
like this. On top of that once you hit 9000' feet you are at risk of
getting altitude sickness, which I think we both got because there
were points in the climb were we got very light-headed and dizzy so we
took quite a few breaks. It got extremely windy the higher we went,
but both of us were dressed quite well to battle the cold. Every once
in awhile we would just stop climbing, turn around, sit down and
admire the beauty of what is known as the great state of Washington. Once
we got to 11500' it got a little easier because it was all covered in
snow which had frozen over and made it a little easier to walk on with
our boots and ice-axes. We got to the summit just a little before
noon, and took a little break on the roof of this little shady lookout
cabin that looks like it's straight from a movie. The view from 12276'
feet is incredible, we could see Mt. Rainer, Mt. St. Helens, Bachelor
and Hood in Oregon and as hard as I tried I just couldn't make out
anything in Idaho. So after eating some
Clif Bars and getting a little
re-energized, we hit a few golf balls from the top of the summit (Yes,
we brought a golf club and balls with us; extra weight but it was
definently worth it). I'm not going to lie, out of the three balls I
hit, only one is worth bragging about, but it was probably the best
hit I've had in a long time.
We were planning on glissading (sliding on your butt and using your
ice-axe as a brake) down the mountain and being down very shortly but
the snow was way too hard on our fragile little tail-bones. So we
started trekking down and we decided to take a short cut (the
stupidest idea Dan and I have ever had in our life). The first couple
hundred yards weren't bad, we were just sliding down some loose rocks
but once the loose rocks ended and we looked around and saw we were on
some very steep cliffs, we started to worry. After some thinking and
realizing that we were almost out of water and there was no way we can
go back up the way we came down because it would honestly take about
an two hours. We somehow found a shorter cliff and slid/fell/rolled down,
after dusting off and making sure nothing was broken, we kept going to
come to even steeper and more dangerous cliffs. At this point we also
saw the biggest avalanche right in front of our eyes, the noise is
incredibly loud once all the ice breaks and falls. Dan and I just
stared in awe and it finally hit us that we got ourselves into some
deep trouble.
We tried lots of things to get out of the cliffs, we finally started
climbing up (again). I decided to try and go across and see if I had
any luck. The part of the mountain were I decided to go across was at
about a 50 degree angle and it was loose rock with ice. After getting
about three feet out I slipped and slid a good 10 feet before I was
finally able to grab some ice and hold on for dear-life. I forgot to
mention that the cliffs were about 20 feet from us and they dropped a
good couple hundred feet (in other words, death). I scratched my hands
up pretty good while this happened, I have never been so scared in my
life, I really wish I could see the expression on my face while I was
sliding down. After calming down and saying another prayer (this was
probably the tenth one that hour) I tried again and had better luck
until I got to another part that was very hard to cross and super-man
me decided to just run across a 50 degree angle wall of loose rock to
what I thought looked like a safe place. This time I slipped and sled
about 15 feet and I honestly must say that it felt like I was sliding
for 5 minutes before I could throw my ice-axe into something that
would hold. After Dan saw me attempting this and coming really close
to falling and dying, he took the smarter but harder route and kept
climbing up.
Once we more or less got back to where we should have been had we
never taken the "short-cut" we were a little more relaxed. The
short-cut took an extra 3 hours, lots of very-scary heart-gripping
moments, some scratched up hands and beat up knees and the last of
whatever energy Dan and I had left. At this point we had about 8 oz.
of water between the both of us and we still had about 8 miles and
5000' of elevation to get down. This time we stayed on the beaten path
and with whatever energy we had left we tried to get down. We were out
of water at this point, and were melting and drinking icicles; which
there wasn't much off. Both our legs were dead, they felt like jelly
and as soon as we took a break they would just start twitching while
we sat there and wouldn't stop until we got up again. I have never
been this dehydrated in my life, my mouth was dry as sandpaper and it
hurt to swallow. Forgot to mention, although it was windy it was clear
sky's and sun was beating down pretty hard.
I'm going to skip alot and get to the part were we finally found a
stream and filled our bottles with the water, there was quite a bit of
dirt in the water but as Dan put it - "God made dirt, dirt don't hurt"
we drank it down and tried to not taste the dirt; until we clenced our
teeth and felt all the dirt in our mouth. We finally got to the High
Camp Trail and started the last 4 miles back to our car. The first
mile was brutal and hard but the last three were a little easier. By
the time we started the last 3 miles we were out of our dirt water and
needed water quick. We came across a little creek that had water in
it, which we filled our bottles with, this water was a lot cleaner but
it had a very weird after-taste, we decided that it was the moss
because the water ran over some rocks with moss on them. We kept telling ourselves we would know if there were bacteria or other unsafe hazards in the water the next morning.
After walking the last 40 minutes in the dark because we had no energy
left to take out our head-lamps, we finally reached our car and we
both felt like hugging each other and singing "Glory, Glory,
Hallelujah" but we didn't have any energy left. We each drank some
clean water that we had in the car and headed home, but not before
eating the best looking thing Dan and I have seen in days; foot-long
Italian BMT sub on herbs and cheese, with Pepperjack cheese, toasted,
tomotoes, onions, cucumbers, green bell peppers, peppercini's, and
pickles with a little mayo from
Subway.
On the way home we did some number crunching, in two days we
hiked/climbed a little less than 20 miles, and today alone we did 15
miles and have been climbing from 5:30 AM to 8:15 PM. We are both dead
tired and feeling pretty sick. I've had a head-ache all day from
dehydration and I feel a fever coming on from the sun-burn on my face
and the cold wind against our sweaty back was probably not the
smartest thing as well. After taking a hot shower and rubbing
IcyHotall over my aching muscles I went to sleep
While we were climbing we both decided that this was the stupidest idea we ever had and we would never mountaineer again. But the next day we had different views. We're planning on doing Mt. Rainer next summer. Anybody want to join?
