T-1: Climb for Clean Air

Another day closer to my climb day!   Today’s agenda is climb school and a fire pit chat with Lou Whittaker.   For some reason I thought we were doing the fire pit chat yesterday with Lou, but it is tonight at 7pm.   Yesterday we were only meeting our lead guide.   During climb school,   we are going to learn different techniques that will save us our lives in the event of unfortunate situation, fine tuning the technique of things that we are already know, such as breathing and walking.   Learn how to self-arrest (just in case you fall) and team arrest (just in case your team member fall), walk on with crampon, walk with ropes and all other cool mountaineering techniques that will needed for this climb.

My pack will be a wee bit lighter since the equipment list for climb school are not as much as the climb day.   We are going to huddle at 8:15am and be at Paradise at 9:30am.   We will be out and about until 3pm.

As I am writing this post, it is raining outside.   Not pouring, but sprinkle rain and a little bit of wind.    It’s not a new thing for Seattle resident since that’s pretty much how our weather all year.   Hopefully, wind stay the same and the rain will not get any harder.

Well, I better eat my breakfast and head out.    Thank you for your emails/tweets!  Keep them coming, since I might need a little encouragement later when I come back from the climb school – super tired, wet and cold and question myself on why in the world I am doing this.

Lots of love.

T-2: Recap

We left the house around noon’ish today and head out to Ashford to start this adventure.   We arrived at Ashford around 2:30pm and picked up some of our gear.   As a sponsor of the event, RMI gave us helmet, harness with locking carabiner and avalanche receiver for free to all the climber.   Since I had done the climbing on 2005, I didn’t need to rent any other gear.

Shortly after, we gathered under one of their tent and we brought our pack and the rest of our gear so the guide can inspect it and make sure we have everything we need.   Laura, our event manager gave us our swag and I got an additional bonus — an ice axe that personalize with my name.   Pretty awesome!

We started the afternoon by an orientation by our lead guide, Jake Beren.    He’s been with RMI for 5 years and been all over the place.   We sat down inside the lounge at the base camp and introduce ourselves, where we come from, why are we doing this, etc.   Then he went over some presentation about the route, what to expect and the schedule for the next 3 days.      We chatted for about an hour, did a little bit of Q&A session and we moved on to a gear check.

He went over some of the gear, starting from the ground (boots) to the top (helmet).   It was interesting to see tip and tricks he show on how to pack efficiently, such as, put your snack inside your parka pocket so when you are at 12,000ft, with a strong wind – you don’t have to dig inside your pack for a snack.   You put your parka on, there reach inside the pocket and there’s your snack.    After that, he started to go over our gear individually.   I got everything okay, other than my thick mittens.   He told me that mine wasn’t warm enough, so I need to get a different one.   So I rented this one.

We wrapped up the afternoon around 5pm.   Tomorrow we are going for a climb school and we are meeting at the same place at 8:15am.

That’s it for today!   I’m hoping for a decent weather.  It’s rainy here and somewhat cold.   Forecast tomorrow said that it will be partly cloudy with a chance of shower (yes, that’s Seattle weather) and it will be 53 degrees at Paradise to start of.

Thank you for everybody’s tweet today!  I only have internet access here at the basecamp.   I’ll try to update daily on what’s going on until the time I’m out in the mountain.

T-2: Climb for Clean Air

In a few hours, I’ll be heading out to Ashford and meet the rest of my climb team.   Rainier Mountaineering Inc. (RMI) is the chosen guide services for this climb.   They have been around for years founded by Lou Whittaker, which is the pioneer and legend on the mountaineering world.   Lou also serve as honorary chairman of American Lung Association Washington for this event.      There are total nine of us on this climb team and we will be divided into three rope team.     Today’s agenda is gear check and orientation.

Gear Check

RMI guides will ask us to lay all of our gear in the ground so they can go over it and make sure we have everything that we need.   I went over the list multiple times and pretty sure I have a complete gear.   They will give us helmet, harness and avalanche receiver but other than that, I own pretty much all the gear.    For a complete list of the equipment, visit RMI check list here.

Orientation

After the gear check, we are going to hang out by the fire pit and chat with Lou Whittaker.   This is when you get to hear the story from the legend and he will ease up your worry, calm you down and let you know what to expect.   If my memory serves me right, the climb lead guide would be there as well to answer all the questions.

This is it.  My 15 weeks of training lead up to this moment.  I’m so excited, yet very nervous.   I have a lot of people that is rooting for me and will follow my progress live.   I can’t let them down.   I’m going to do this.

I’m going to summit Mt. Rainier.