April Expedition Skills Seminar

RMI Guide, Andy Bond gave us a trip report from the April Expedition Skills Seminar. Here's a look at their week spent on the mountain:

After a day of orientation which included knot tying, transceiver practice, Leave No Trace Training and getting ready for our 4500' climb up to Camp Muir, our group was ready to head up the mountain for a week of training. Camp Muir is located at 10,040' on the south side of Mt. Rainier at the top of Muir Snowfield. Climbing Rainier in the winter, you never know what to expect in terms of weather. This trip provided us with a little bit of everything! We left Paradise on a pleasant day with good snowshoeing conditions but with a 1000' left to Camp Muir we found ourselves in a whiteout, but thankfully with no precipitation.

After moving into our hut which we called home for the week, it was time to start training. Camp Muir sits on a ridge separating the Muir Snowfield from the Cowlitz Glacier providing a perfect area to get in some avalanche as well as glacier travel training. Climbing to the Ingraham Flats gave us spectacular views of the Ingraham Headwall and the upper mountain as well as an opportunity to travel on glaciers and experience massive crevasses which would serve as the focus for training the next day.

The next days training focused on crevasse rescue and anchor building where everyone learned about different haul systems to pull people out of crevasses. One of the nice parts about being at 10,000' is that a lot of times we are above the clouds enjoying sunshine. Our group was able to enjoy the nice weather for training but also were able to see some beautiful sunsets.

Summit day was upon us which meant an early waking or alpine start. We put our harnesses, helmets, and crampons on and headed out up the Disappointment Cleaver route (Standard Route) with ice axes in hand at the early hour of four in the morning. After walking for an hour and arriving at our first break at the Ingraham Flats we found ourselves in a whiteout with snow falling and the wind blowing. Today was not going to be our day so we headed back to Camp Muir to get out of the storm. Thankfully the storm abated later that day and we set up some fixed lines practice for bigger mountains like Denali and Everest as well as nice 100 foot repel off of Muir Peak.

All in all it was a great week with lots of laughs and skills learned.