Mount Adams Climb Report. What follows is a somewhat meandering description of my climb of Mount Adams. I wrote most of this several days after the climb but didn't wrap it up until just now. One could conceivably annotate each paragraph with photos from the next blog post.
Mount Adams is a prominent 12,280 ft stratovolcano in southern Washington state approximately 25 miles north of the Hood River and 20 miles east of Mount St. Helens. In early July, its beautiful slopes are snow-covered and offers an 'easy' climbing route along its southern face that is free from significant mountaineering hazards - crevasses to fall into, cliffs from which rocks fall, and avalanche-prone slopes - making it a popular climb for residents of Portland and Seattle. On July 11, 2010, I accompanied my roommate Tim and his friend Rumi to the summit of Mount Adams in a single day's climb.
Getting to Mount Adams wilderness requires approximately four hours of driving time from Bellevue, so we left at 11pm the night before and drove all night. Delayed slightly in acquiring our third climber, we didn't really depart Federal Way until close to midnight. During the drive, I managed to get perhaps 45 minutes of sleep but was otherwise conscious for the journey. By the time morning twilight approached, we were still beyond the trailhead wondering through backroads north of the Hood River and kicking ourselves for getting such a late start. Other climbers would be just waking up now, having camped at the trailhead or - better - at 9,000 ft and would easily summit during mid-morning when the snow is still frozen solid from the previous night's cold. Every second that passed as we blazed over the narrow dirt roads made the summit seem more and more distant.
By about 6am, we reached the trailhead. Mt. Rainier had left me with false expectations, as Paradise, the trailhead for the skyline trail below the Muir Snowfields, is the location of an enormous resort hotel. Cold Springs on Mount Adams, in contrast, was a sequence of camp sites at the end of a labyrinth of dirt roads. On this day, it was full of vacant tents and quite calm. We recorded our location via a Garmin hand-held GPS and noted our starting elevation of approximately 5,500 ft above sea level.
We donned our boots, grabbed our packs, and started up a dirt road consisting of four or five switchbacks. Starting time was 6:30am. In approximately 0.75 miles, we reached the first patches of snow. The sun was up, the sky bright blue, and filtering through the evergreen trees. This being the first time I wore my mountaineering boots outside of my bedroom and office, I noted they were remarkably comfortable. They demonstrated good traction on the snow, and nylon gaiters around my ankles prevented snow from entering above the laces.
Thirty minutes in, we stopped to reconfigure our packs and apply sun screen. In spite of the snow on the ground, temperatures were warm, and our bodies' heat output was high. I wore a Patagonia capalene long-sleeved shirt whose loose weave enabled moisture to escape but kept me at a good temperature. Unfortunately, we knew that this day would be a warm one for southern Washington, and that would mean the snowfields we would be traversing would be soft and weak by the time we reached higher elevations. At best, this would mean more energy spent with each step. Worst case could mean avalanche danger in which entire slabs of snow pull apart and slide down the mountain. Things were calm and serene at this point, so we didn't dwell on that.
We progressed quickly, and in spite of being the least experienced climber of this group, I kept up a good pace. In no time, our elevation gains became apparent. Mount Hood, directly to our south, loomed above Oregon. Occasionally, we'd obtain glimpses of the snow-covered Mount St. Helens, though her crater was not visible. Looking north, the 11,500 ft false summit of Mount Adams appeared as merely a point off in the distance. Insects buzzed around in spite of the snow, and the density of timber began to thin. What had once been small ridges lying distantly in our path had grown to be towering massifs. At some point, the hike had become a climb.
Ascending a snow-covered slope is an iterative process in which the toe of one's boot is kicked into the snow with sufficient force to crush down the fluffy snow into a hard, foot-shaped step. The lead climber "breaks a trail" leaving a foot path the others follow. Kicking is hard work, but at this point no one was tired enough to feel a real need to take advantage of existing paths. That kind of bravado probably isn't a good idea, and we should have walked single file over the existing trail from earlier climbers. Below 8,000 ft, we maintained a fast aerobic pace and took breaks only for water, my 96 ounces of which were beginning to weigh upon me.
The suns rays began making an impact. Snow is an excellent reflector, and we made frequent stops to apply sunscreen to our exposed parts. We got hotter, and there was frequent talk of being "cooked like a lobster." I donned glacier goggles, and hats came out.
Just after noon, we reached the "Lunch Counter," a comparatively flat area at approximately 9,000 ft with exposed rocks. Sensible climbers attempting to summit Mount Adams in two-day climbs typically set up tents here using natural landforms to reduce exposure to winds. Brooke and Ryan camped here the weekend before my climb, for example. Climbers attempting to summit in a single day eat lunch here, as it is the last reprieve before a steep 2,000 ft ascent up to the false summit. We sat down on some warm volcanic rocks and ate a much-needed lunch. I ate a banana, peanut butter and jelly sandwich, drank some Gatorade, and consumed a Gu packet. The sweets were beginning to make me nauseated, but I didn't bring other options. We looked out past the beautiful river valley to Mount Hood and admired the view. Sparse clouds slowly rolled in from the east but never engulfed the mountain. Other climbers glissaded down from the summit, having sensibly gotten a far earlier start than we did.
Setting off from the lunch counter, the climb quickly grew more challenging. We were now on an exposed face with a strong wind blowing down the mountain. The slope quickly steepened to the maximum of 30 degrees, and our ever increasing altitude made aerobic respiration difficult. Now afternoon, the overhead sun had warmed the snowfield such that each step sloshed through nearly a foot of snow, and the ice axe in my hand penetrated the entire length of its shaft as I dug in for additional support. Suspecting that at any moment my feet might slip and I would fall, I prepared to dig in with the ice axe for a self arrest with every step.
I had trouble obtaining a satisfying pace and frequently climbed too fast then ran out of oxygen and had to pause to catch my breath. This quickly wore me out and didn't make this part of the climb too pleasant. A steady stream of climbers glissaded by, as our trail took us up between well-established glissade paths. Skiiers and snowboarders also whizzed by every so often, so we shouted out to them. I can't imagine a better way to give back nearly 7,000 ft of hard-won elevation than by skiing down, and these slopes were pretty ideal for that.
After ages went by, Tim and I reached the false summit. The altitude was beginning to get to me, and I had to breath hard for nearly ten minutes to finally catch my breath. My throat was parched, but the Gatorade I had on hand left me nauseated. I highly recommend bringing water over Gatorade. We sat just below the peak of the false summit and admired the view from 11,500 ft. Just above our heads, a fast wind whipped over the peak and motivated better insulation. I added long underwear under my cargo pants, donned a $10.00 fleece jacket purchased from a Pier 39 giftshop in San Francisco, and put on a borrowed nylon shell jacket. This kept the wind out, me insulated, and ventilated to avoid perspiration building up inside.
Peaking our heads over the false summit, an intense and continuous headwind blasted us. We had over 800 ft more to ascend and a daunting slope with plenty of wind exposure. We moved swiftly along a shallow basin toward the next slope and looked upwards as tiny and distant climbers provided us a sense of scale. Tim, suffering slightly from the altitude and from the intentionally heavy pack he was carrying to train with, suggested I take the lead.
With no one in front of me, I settled into a good pace that made what might otherwise have been a dreadful climb at the end of a long haul much more pleasant. I employed the "rest step" in which, after each step, a complete breath was inhaled and exhaled. If I put my foot down more than eight or nine inches above the previous step, I took a second breath. It took a deliberate effort to keep things slow, but consequently I could sustain over 200 steps between short rest breaks and I never reached a point in which anaerobic respiration got the better of me. If any part of the slope above looked like it might give way, I would have enough energy to attempt try to outrun it.
In what felt like no time at all, I had climbed the last major stretch and stopped on a short crest awaiting my two other companions to reach me. I used the time to take panorama photographs with my iPhone whose LCD was completely invisible in the burning sunlight. Three or four individuals came down from the now-visible summit a mere hundred yards or so beyond me. I felt like racing up to it but instead elected to wait for my friends to arrive.
They did, and we marched up to a small mound of snow covering the remains of an old mining shack. Volcanos are good sources of sulfur, evidently. This was the true summit, 12,280 ft above sea level. Sparse cloud cover at 8,000 ft added to the incredible view. Taking our first glimpses to the north, Mount Rainier loomed over the horizon, its three peaks easily resolvable. Mount Hood had grown less captivating with each exhausting push up the route, but suddenly it was much more charming, particularly since we were looking "down" on its 11,500 ft peak. Mount St. Helens was consumed by its cloud cover and barely visible. Several features on the north side of the mountain came into view. I never could make out the rounded concavity of a volcanic crater, but I'm told one exists and would probably be visible at the time of this writing due to melting.
After plenty of summit photos, we took shelter behind the true summit. Winds had shifted, and it no longer concealed us from the blast, so we darted off back down the trail as quickly as possible. With five hours of daylight remaining, we weren't technically rushed, but "summit fever" had worn off.
To enable a productive glissade, I duct-taped a plastic bag around the seat of my pants hoping it would reduce friction and keep me dry. Predictably, it didn't do either of those things and ripped off immediately. Nevertheless, on each of the steep slopes, I made an attempt to glissade down the well-established paths in the snow. And each time, I barely got moving at all. My pants are not slippery, and treking poles attached to my pack dug in. These factors combined with wet snow made the experience somewhat demeaning.
In approximately three hours from the summit, we made it back to the trail and not long after the car. Energized by completion of an intense and impressive climb, we chattered on in the car for twenty minutes as we drove back to civilization. This lasted for twenty minutes and then I hit a wall. Over 42 hours of being awake hit me hard, and I became irritable and passed in and out of consciousness. The microsleeping lasted the entire way back; I tried to avoid actually going to sleep, as the driver was in the same sleep-exhausted condition as I was and, toward the end, was bouncing between rumble strips like photons in a fiber.
Survived that, made it home at 3am. Arrived to work at 10:00am. Best climb to date!
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