[dicey]

I was planning on going into the Foss Lakes this weekend, but this trip got called off due to injury (amy's knee), so i got roped into doing Mt. Rainier with some friends who were planning on doing the Kautz glacier route - which i have never done before. the plan was to stay at the paradise inn-expensive so we shoved the 6 of us into a 2person room. this turned out to be a mistake as we didn't get much sleep due to SOMEONE SNORING ALL NIGHT LONG!! so off we go in fog at 9:30 am. up to glacier vista, then down across the Nisqually Glacier (roped up), up a long narrow chute with many huge boulders strewn across the base we continued up along the w. edge of the wilson glacier and then zigzagged up the turtle snowfield, finally calling camp at 6pm @ 10.4kft. There are many great bivy sites on the wapowety cleaver (i really like saying 'wapowety') and if we had been faster we would have found the deluxe accommodations higher, approx 11k and change, but, oh well. we crammed our 2 tents and 2 bivys into the spots we could find, melted snow for water and ate some dinner. the weather had cleared above 9k, and we could see a heavy cloud bank below. What would the weather have in store for us for the summit bid in the morning? we sacked out by 9 to get up at 1 I didn't sleep at all- just waiting for the alarm to go off. finally, we are up and ready to go by 2am (or so)lotsa stars + the milky way!! avoiding camp hazard and the ice cliffs completely by ascending the wapowety to a reddish buttress and finding a fixed line and a handline down to the glacier avoiding unnecessary complications - we decided to go for it. we found the fixed line, set our own rope and rappelled to the glacier. from this point on, there was only up and up, tired from sleep depravation, more up, lots of interesting sun cup spikes (they are called pent-somethings-but i don't know how to spell it), seracs, more seracs, more up and even more up and finally at 10:20am, the summit !!! yay!! everyone was so beat and it was so cold and windy, we just headed directly back down with little or no interest in the summit register, food, water, etc. we stopped and took a nap out of the wind about 1/2 way down. Heading back down the wapowety cleaver, we ran into a guy from New Hampshire (their team of 3 had followed us all the way up from glacier vista and had decided to wait and try for the summit on sunday), heading up to find the 'shortcut' route. we gave him what info we could, then dragged ourselves back into camp by 4pm.......um, that is like 14hours!!! never could i imagine this would take sooey long. anyway, the 'shortcut' isn't really a shortcut if you have 5 already tired people trying to rappel at 3 in the morning...... we hung out for a while in the sun, then it started to snow around 5:30. refuge in tents and bivys was sought, although, a mouse ran into our tent and woke me up. 15min. later another(or the same?) jacked up mouse came into the tent and BIT MY FINGER the nerve!! anyway, no real dinner was prepared due to exhaustion, and 12 hours of blissful sleep was attained. sunday morning was astoundingly bright (at 6am). little ants were watched ascending the muir snowfield, breakfast was had and camp was packed up for the descent. it just kept getting clearer as we walked and glissaded down. we almost caught up with another team of (5?) climbers who apparently bailed early this morning from their summit bid. Getting back to glacier vista is very odd because there are people swarming everywhere due to the beautiful weather....aah civilization.....where people smell like soap and perfume and stuff - weird. when we get back to the parking lot it is more like a racetrack of people driving around and around, trying to find a parking spot. we probably could sold ours, but we just wanted to get to food, which ended up being the copper river inn blackberry pie, blackberry butter, blackberry vinegarette, copper river ale......yum! THE END I know that this is nwhikers, not nwclimbers, but i was SUPPOSED to have been backpacking the lovely foss lakes, where i have never even been (only to the necklace valley), but this happened instead. i hope you all can forgive me

adams from ranier

kautz 1

kautz2

seracs on kautz route

kautz route

muir snowfield

[ridgescrambler]

hey great pics thanks for sharing - Sunday was an awesome day - I was on Mount Adams waving at you - didn't you see me

[dicey]

yes, actually i did see you waving and i waved back. Did you see me?

[ridgescrambler]

absolutely! Here's the pic of you on Rainier

dicey ontop of Rainier