RMI Winter Expedition Seminar - Mount Rainier -  April 18 - 23, 2004

First night we made camp at 6,500 feet and got a clear view of the summit

One of our guides, Jeff Ward

Snow walls help stop the wind

Guides dug in our cooking and meal tent

On second day we reached the Camp Muir hut at 10,050 feet were we would live the next 4 days

The first four days of the trip were all stormed out with no visibility

Sun came out briefly while guide Jeff shows us snowpack analysis to predict avalanches

Wednesday afternoon the sun came out. Our home, the hut, in background

Trip leader, Paul Maier, shows us crevasse rescue techniques

Jeff does rope tricks in hut to teach us how to climb out of a crevasse

Our outhouse, next to hut, and it's well worn path

More scenes of Camp Muir. We would climb above the highest large rock, Gibraltar Rock, the next day

Me with a pal

My orange boots kept my feet warm

Above the clouds at camp

5 am on climbing day, Thursday, after no sleep for more than four days

Going up to try for the summit

Getting higher

Climbing scene

We climbed a ridgeline.  Here we had to rappel down a cliff face

Interesting geography along the way

Views kept getting better

When we reached 12,000 feet, this chute was determined to have unstable snow that halted out ascent due to avalanche danger.
This would be the turn back point of the summit attempt.

Trip leader, Paul Maier, talks via radio to climbers higher up, who have assessed the danger as too great

Me at the 12,000 foot level

On the descent, at around 11,500 feet, three of our guys climbed this rock

Good view of the ridge we climbed and the path

Our route up

My rope team leader, Mike Horst, lead me and a buddy up and down the mountain

Our home, the hut, is the tiny square dot in the center