Mt. Adams

Socks? Check. Sandals? Check. Glasses? Khaki pants? Check, check.

Let’s climb a mountain!

This year’s husband-wife-getaway involved driving, camping, dust, rocks, altitude, sun, snow, sliding, and a killer burger.

The specs: Mt. Adams is 12,276 feet above sea level. We see it every day on the horizon, and it’s 150 miles away from Grandview. It’s big and beautiful. We decided it would be a super date to climb it together.

The story: Jeff and I dropped Jay and Rose off with Steph on Thursday afternoon and drove towards the mountain. About 40 minutes into the drive, when we reached Highway 97, we came upon a  freshly-erected roadblock. The men there informed us that 97 was closed, and we had to find an alternate route. Closed? Blasted forest fires! There are not too many other roads through southern Washington, so we had to completely backtrack and go down and around, adding nearly 2 hours to our drive.

We finally made it to the Trout Lake Ranger Station and obtained our climbing permits around 5pm. Then it was a bumpy, curvy 45 minute drive up to the Cold Springs campground, where we pitched our tent, made a fire, and started cooking dinner in 20 minutes flat. Camping without kids is sinfully easy. After slurping down a few cans of Campbell’s chunky soup, we decided to go for an evening constitutional on one of the gorgeous trails near our campsite.

The sun was warm and softly sinking, and we held hands on the wide parts of the trail. It was beautiful, even though last year’s forest fires had made their mark on the once-green forest. About a mile into the walk, however, I started getting a blister on my heel, with four more hot spots quickly forming on other parts of my foot. I was wearing the shoes I wore on the handcart trek and on the muddy Shi Shi Beach hike. They didn’t blister me then, but I had a nice fat one after less than an hour of calm walking this time. When my shoes dried out after that Shi-Shi mud hike, they got warped and started giving me blisters. Yikes! The only other shoes I brought into the wilderness were my Keen sandals. Better than flip-flops, yes, but we were going to climb a snowy mountain the next day! Crisis. There was only one solution: wear the sandals or be crippled by blisters. Yes, I climbed a mountain in sandals.

We spent the hour and a half after our walk before bedtime in our cute little 2 man tent, playing Quiddler (the best card-word-game ever) and enjoying each other’s undivided attention. It was so cozy and happy. We brought pillows on this trip, and it was a very restful night’s sleep…

…until our alarm rang at 3:30am. Time to get up and at ‘em! We ate breakfast (granola and yogurt) by flashlight, packed up our gear, tossed it in the car, clipped on our daypacks, and started hiking at 4:30am. We wore headlamps for the first half hour or so before the pre-dawn sky provided enough light to take them off. I love dawn. It is such a still, peaceful moment of the day where everything seems to hold its breath together, anticipating what the new day will bring. That’s how I felt when I was hiking in the wee hours at least. The 5,500 foot starting altitude definitely increased the impression of breathlessly awaiting the day.

The mountain was looming in the dark right in front of us when we started out. The trail started off at a gentle incline, wide enough for us to hold hands. Then it got narrower and rockier with switchbacks.

The moon hung artistically in the sky above Mt. Hood on the pre-dawn horizon.

Looking back.

Looking forward.

The pink light started coming—see it on that right tip of the snowy peak?

Mt. St. Helens blushing, above and below:

Mt. Hood, above and below:

One of my favorite pictures of them all. Only the light of dawn can make rugged mountains look so soft and mysterious at the same time.

Do you see that swoopy dark line cutting across the middle and up into the sky on the right? I thought it was Bob Ross messing with the landscape, but it’s the shadow of Mt. Adams! Fascinating. The gentle smudgy pink morning light disappeared quickly into full daylight. The Day arrived. When I first saw the sunshine, I realized that I left my sunglasses in the car. Uh-oh, snow.

Did I mention the wildflowers?

They were everywhere, acting bright and beautiful among the rocks and logs.

After the flowers, we reached the first of the white stuff: a steep narrow path cut nearly straight up the snow, with small steps made from some kind pioneer’s ice boots. We strapped on our Yak Trax and scaled the snowy wall. It was the first of many STEEP snowy climbs. I had to force myself not to think about how on earth we were going to get down. None of these pictures really give an accurate scale of the SIZE of the mountain. It was BIG. All the pictures I took looking downhill minimize the size of the sweeping mountainsides.

Ok, chills! The dark triangle in this picture is the shadow of Mt. Adams. Mt. St. Helens is to the right.

There were a few campsites at various intervals along the climb. They looked like burial grounds or some archeology site to me, but the rocks were piled like that to keep the wind out and the campers in, I think (so nobody would roll down the mountain). It got progressively windier the higher we climbed.

Whenever we took a breather, I also took some pictures. The view kept getting better and better, so I couldn’t help it!

A quick word about footwear: I strapped my hiking shoes to my backpack just in case the snow got too cold in my socks and sandals, but shockingly, I hiked the whole way up and down in socks and sandals, nerd style. All those people in clunky hiking shoes or stiff ice boots kind of looked on in wonder when they saw my feet. But hiking up in sandals actually worked quite well. I strapped YakTrax snow grippers on my sandals and that gave me all the traction I needed.

I call this one “Jeff vs. Mountain.”

The second time we saw snow was the last time—it was snowy for the rest of the way up after this, about 4 hours worth of hiking.

At last we made it up to the famed Lunch Counter. It is an absurd name for the rocky, sloped resting spot. I thought it would at least have a flat rock somewhere, but there was nothing counter-like about the place. The wind was chilly so we only paused for 10 minutes or so before heading onward and upward. Then the real work began.

It just kept getting steeper! I looked to the left and this is how the ground looked. Whenever I stood up straight, it felt like I was going to fall off the side of the mountain. I actually had to windmill my arms to get my center of gravity back a few times. It was a dizzying feeling, compounded by the 9,000 foot or so altitude at this point.

From here on out I have a lot of pictures of Jeff’s back. He led the way fearlessly. This is what I saw when I looked straight in front of myself. We set off on the steepest part yet after the Lunch Counter, toward the False Summit. Mostly we found pathways through the snow that were made up of divots from other people’s ice boots. They were very helpful on the steep slick snow. About this point we realized that we were making pretty good time. It’s probably because we got too cold (the wind froze our sweat) every time we decided to stop for a rest, so we just kept going with those short 10 second gasp-breaks every 10 feet or so.

Looking back down that steep slope on the way up to the False Summit. I didn’t feel safe unless I had at least one hand on the ground in front of me at all times—it was that steep. It was the most laborious slow-paced walking I’ve ever done. I counted a max of 30 steps before I had to stop for a few seconds to catch my breath. Each step was either 6 inches above the previous one or 3 feet above. As I huffed and hiked, I tried thinking of a way to describe what it felt like there. In my oxygen-deprived state all I came up with was it felt like taking 3 stairs at a time for an hour straight while breathing through a straw. With a slip of footing every few minutes and the constant fear of falling backwards off the edge of the earth at my back.

Behold, the view from the False Summit. It was hard enough to be the real summit, I thought when I got there. That’s Mt. St. Helens out there and Mr. Moon still hanging out in the sky above.

Each of us posed at the false summit with Mt. Hood in the background. Notice how it looks like a snowy cliff behind us? It was one. That’s the way we climbed up.

That’s the real summit, way up thataway. We had a short break from the snow and then it was back to slippy slidy crunchy hikey.

Too bad this convenient path didn’t last the rest of the way up.

Just keep hiking, just keep hiking. By this point it felt like my whole life had been spent putting one foot in front of the other through the snow on Mt. Adams. The sun was warming the once-hard packed snow into slippery treacherous softness. Tired legs got tireder.

Getting closer! Those two stripes in the snow on the slope of the mountain show where we were headed. That little man in the right hand corner is Jeff.

The incline wasn’t quite so steep up here at first, but the footing was horrible.

The snow was full of these giant pock marks that were 1-3 feet deep each, so it turned into a game of breakneck hopscotch, picking which mound looked the least collapsible. Once I tried stepping in the hollow instead of on the little peaks, and I sunk up to my knee. Burrr! Every 2 or 3 steps, my foot would slip and I stumbled.

Hello, Jeffrey.

Looking ahead…

…looking back.

We kept slip-slogging along, and then Jeff disappeared from my sight. My lungs were working overtime to extract what little oxygen they could from the air. I was trembling and exhausted, and my husband was gone! I kept putting one foot in front of the other and then Jeff’s head reappeared and said “you’re almost there!” I took a few more steps, and SUDDENLY the world opened up around me. I gasped, “WOW.” The first thing I saw was Mt. Rainier, big and beautiful, right in front of my face.

Jeff triumphant at the summit.

There was a 360 degree panorama of blue beauty. Our hiking guidebook says that the summit has “views only conceivable to those who’ve been there.” So true! Along the whole climb I was kind of wondering how much better the views could get—the vistas were stunning all along the way. But add 360 degrees of that stunning-ness and it was jaw-dropping. The second thing I said after I arrived was “woah.” I know I was low on oxygen, but the view would’ve made me speechless even if I was strapped to an oxygen tank.

Revolving slowly in  a circle at the summit, I took these pictures:

That smoky patch is our Valley. That forest fire that closed Highway 97 obscured our view. We were hoping to see Grandview from the summit. Ah well.

The marker at the summit. The actual elevation must’ve been rubbed off over the years, but it was 12,276 feet above sea level. A nice man up there offered to trade picture-taking with us, and he was very thorough. He took one of us with each of the three mountains in the background:

Mt. Rainier

Mt. Hood

and Mt. St. Helens

As much as we’d have liked to stay up on the summit for a while, exploring and enjoying the views, it was freezing up there! The wind was blowing straight through our sweat and chilling us both to the bone. Plus the sun glare without sunglasses was piercing. So after 15 minutes of enjoyment, we headed back down. The aerobic slow up was over, and as Jeff said, it was time for the fun part.

Fun part? Sitting down in the cold snow and sliding at breakneck speed down the side of a mountain is not my definition of fun. It’s my definition of PURE TERROR. If there was any other way to get down the mountain, believe me, I would’ve taken it. But the slopes were too steep and slick to make walking a safer option. So we slid. The official term is “glissade.” It sounds far more graceful than it was. Jeff brought a pair of wind pants to put on over his jeans for the glissading, but I just had my water-resistant adventure pants and my underwear between my skin and the snow. Burrr. Ouch.

The glissade paths were carved deep into the softening snow, but at least 4 of them were long and SPEEDY. Luckily they didn’t go straight down. They had curves every now and then, which slowed us a little but also whiplashed and jerked us around.

I was yelling and and squealing and freaking out generally the whole way down each glissade. Before I started sliding each time, I actually had to say a desperate prayer for the courage to slide. Then I turned off the rational part of my brain and pushed off.

We made it to the bottom of the snow in 1/3 of the time it took us to ascend. ONE THIRD of the time! That’s because we were flying on those glissade chutes. I still can’t believe we made it out alive. I did sprain my thumb while trying to slow down, but after that I discovered if I laid down and pressed my backpack into the snow, the shoes strapped to my pack made amazing brakes. Still, though, most of my body is bruised, scraped, and/or traumatized in some way from the high-speed seatbelt-less rollercoaster ride. I envied every person I passed who had a helmet on. I thought how sad my poor kids would be when their reckless mother died on a mountainside. Jeff said one guy who was on his way up stopped and took a video of Jeff sliding down the mountain at 20 miles per hour. I took some videos too.

At last the glissading ended and we stumble-walked through the rest of the snow back to the rocks. I felt so wimpy and exhausted, and every step slid out from under me. It was a chore getting back to those blessed rocks. From there on out it was a relatively tame hike downhill on wobbly legs through the hot sun and dust back to our car.

Hello, dusty rocky switchback-crazy trail.

The wildflowers cheered me up.

The trail tamed back down again, but Mother Nature still wanted the final say. So she gave us a bright sunburn.

When we got back to the car, I felt so triumphant—that was a hard thing, and we DID it! It took us 6 hours to reach the summit, and 3 hours to get back down again (plus 15 minutes at the summit and a few other breaks). We left at 4:30am and got back at 2pm.

Goodbye, Mr. Adams. Thanks for letting us walk all over you.

Back at the ranger station (we had to “check out” so they didn’t send search and rescue out after us), the lady there asked us if we made it to the summit. Actually what she said was “did you summit?” I didn’t know that to summit was a verb. But when we said we did, she had us show her a picture of us at the top a proof, and then she gave us each a certificate. We felt so special.

We asked where we could go to get some food (there’s not much out there). A lady in the back of the ranger station out of sight kept calling through a door, “Killer Burger! Killer Burger!”

So we decided to go to Killer Burger in Bingen, WA, and we were very glad we did.  It was about 3:30pm when we got there, and a sign told us that it was “crazy hour” which meant $5 burgers with fries. Score! Our mountain-starved stomachs welcomed those big beauties. We brought lots of snacks on our hike, but it was impossible to keep up with the major calorie-burning we were doing for that 9 hours, so we were STARVING by the time we got to Killer Burger. YUM. For the record, we did not try the Peanut Butter Pickle Bacon burger. We just went with the classic, no onions.I took a picture of the menu because I loved their motto: “every burger comes with bacon!” And it wasn’t just 2 tiny pathetic pieces of soggy bacon like other places. That crispy bacon was criss-cross stacked onto the delicious burger. Manna to our ravenous tums.

We took turns driving the 2 hours from Bingen, WA to Grandview. It was hard—we were both so tired after our 3:30 wake up and 9 hours on the mountain. But we made it home to our sweet kids by 7pm. What a quick trip! It was nice to come home and recover after that long day in our own house.

We love mountains!

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