On May 10-13, we climbed Rainier, up the Tahoma Glacier and descending via Disappointment Cleaver. Our 3 day climb took 4 days.

Stats: 12,000 feet of elevation gain, 8,770 feet of loss, 21.5 miles

GPX Tracks linked below:

• Day 1 (Westside Road to toe of glacier, ~6000 feet)
• Day 2 (6000 feet to 10,000 feet)
• Day 3 (10,000 feet to crater rim)
• Day 4 (traverse around outside of crater rim to DC, descend via DC route)

I’ve been looking at the Tahoma Glacier from Olympia since I was a child. I really wanted to give it a shot this season, when I was in Denali shape.

I was able to organize a strong group of climbers. We did a day of crevasse rescue practice at Snoqualmie Pass the weekend before. The plan was to climb to the toe of the Tahoma Glacier on day 1, camp around 10,000 -12,000 feet on day 2, summit and descend via DC on Day 3. Things did not go exactly according to plan.

Day 1: Westside Road to the Toe of the Tahoma Glacier (2200′ to 6000′)

We went up to Paradise to set up a car shuttle and get our climbing permits. It was the first day of the year that the Paradise Ranger station was open. The Longmire WIC was closed. We were able to talk to the climbing ranger, who didn’t have any recent conditions information, but showed us some photos and a map of the route that was more to the right of the route than the one that we had GPX tracks for. He described how people getting on the toe of the glacier tended to go to the right, although the photo he showed was of the mountain in full summer with wildflowers instead of snow, so it was hard to visualize.

The Westside road was closed at the junction with the Nisqually to Longmire road, adding 3 miles to our trek (it was open when we came back on the 13th). It was frustrating to walk on a very nice road, but at least it was easy walking.

There is signage at the turnoff to the Tahoma Creek trail that it is closed due to hazardous conditions, but without any alternatives we walked up it. The trail is washed out in many places and we had to do a combination of bushwhacking and walking in the creek bed, but it was nice trail where it existed. Since this is the outflow for the glacier, there is a risk of glacier outburst floods. Probably not a good place to be later in the summer, but this is an early season route anyway.

We encountered snow pretty soon after joining with the Wonderland trail. We followed another team that had post holed up, but eventually put on snowshoes. We found water running off the rocks on the end of Emerald ridge and were able to fill our bottles. We camped at about 6000 feet on snow below the toe of the glacier.

Day 2

I started the day off by walking too far left, veering towards the Puyallup Cleaver. We had to go down and then up again to the right to correct. We also lost some time futzing around with putting snowshoes on and then taking them off again. We really should have just kept them on the whole time, and we ended up walking in them most of the day.

The slope we had to ascend to get onto the glacier was steep and full of soft snow. The sun was hitting it just as we got to the top of it and I would not have wanted to be on it any later.

It was really cool to navigate a glacier no one else was on. We briefly crossed paths with a couple climbing Sunset Ridge, and saw another couple going far right at the start but we did not see them again or see footprints, so we think they may have climbed the Tahoma Cleaver. We had the glacier proper to ourselves.

We made camp around 10,000 feet. We had talked about camping higher, but it didn’t look like there were any suitable places, and we didn’t find any the next day. We were pretty well protected from rockfall, which was coming down the Puyallup and Tahoma Cleavers on either side of us.

Around 4:30 that day we saw two skiers descend the Tahoma Glacier. We didn’t see them until they were below us to the left, hopping crevasses. It looked insane but a cool way to get down if you have the skills and risk tolerance for it.

Day 3

The start of the steep section looked pretty close from camp, but in practice there were a lot of crevasses to navigate through. We had to traverse left, which was difficult, because that’s where the crevasses were. It took us about 3 hours to get to the base of the steep stuff, which started around 11,600 feet.

The steep slope was pretty icy. At first I tried to zig zag back and forth using French technique, in hopes it would be more efficient than going straight up. There were also some footprints in the ice, possibly from the skiers, that zig-zagged and I generally was trying to follow those in hopes the walking would be easier. My peroneal tendons were hurting so bad it was a relief when I switched to front pointing. But after awhile both Achilles were hurting from the front-pointing. I tried to lead and place running protection, which was sub-optimal given my poor ice climbing skills, the poor snow quality, and the amount of pain in my ankles. There was a lot of surface ice with soft snow behind it. Eventually I tapped out and one of my team mates took over. They were all better ice climbers than me, and we started to move faster. However, my lungs were pretty irritated from doing pretty intense (for me) climbing at altitude after forgetting to take my inhaler and I would be pretty slow for the rest of the trip.

The steep section went to about 13,400. It was still steep above that, but not nearly as bad. We didn’t feel like we needed to place running pro there. The last 800 feet were painfully slow, mostly on my account. In addition to my breathing, my ankles were in a lot of pain. We realized we weren’t getting down that day and would be bivying at the crater, so we didn’t need to rush it anyway.

We didn’t get to near the crater rim until about 4pm, and were focused on finding a place to sleep, not on summiting. We camped on the northern side of the pass between Point Success and the crater rim, at about 14,200 feet. We were able to use our satellite devices to let our loved ones know that we were fine, and check weather. We dug out coffin-shaped holes for our bivvies to protect them from the wind. It was really cold that night, likely in the teens, since my water bottle froze pretty fast but my Jet Boil still worked (I’d been sleeping with the fuel canisters in my bag).

The cold temps also meant the condensation in our bivvies froze, so it was snowing inside the bivvies. I was warm enough in my 30 degree bag, plus a liner, and all of my clothes. This meant I didn’t have a pillow, so I didn’t really sleep, but at least I was warm enough, even with my face outside of the bivy. I also got so used to snow on my face that it didn’t register when it was actually snowing, and I opened my eyes to everything coated in rime at about 3:30am. It was also a white-out, so we went back to bed with the plan to re-check conditions at sunrise.

Day 4

Fortunately the visibility cleared around sunrise. We packed up pretty quickly and traversed around the edge of the crater rim, which was pretty painful for my right peroneal. We found the top of the Disappointment Cleaver route pretty easily. It was flagged and is at one of the crater’s few (maybe only?) openings. We began following it down, although there were a few times when the boot pack and the wands diverged. We generally followed the boot pack, not necessarily on purpose but because we usually didn’t see that we’d missed a wand until we’d descended on the boot pack and realized the wands were on another side of a crevasse or a drop-off.

The boot pack ended in a steep drop off above a crevasse, although there was a snow bridge in the crevasse made of remnants from the slope that had collapsed. There were a couple of skiers coming up who were shoveling steps up the steep slope. We set up running protection with pickets, and descended down the steps, crossed the snow bridge, climbed over a snow block, and then traversed around a crevasse to more moderate terrain.

As we descended, a group of guides came up with a ladder to set up a route around what we had just come down. Ladders in May don’t bode well for the summer climbing season.

Getting down the cleaver itself was pretty simple. There was enough snow on the cleaver, and no one else coming up or down while we were on it. We’d find out later that the guided groups still weren’t going up on account of the route problems we’d encountered. The guides had set handlines, which were handy and which I don’t remember them there the last time I was on the cleaver, in 2014.

There was some water running off the rocks at the base of the cleaver, and with no one else there we were able to hang out and get at least a half liter each.

We reached Camp Muir around 2:15. We unroped and agreed that everyone could find their own way down the snow slope. The snowfield was in the worst shape I’ve ever seen it. Super soft snow and super tracked out. I tried putting snowshoes on but they just slid into all the postholes and were pretty uncomfortable with my ankles. Postholing was less painful but slow going, especially when I postholed up to my hip a few times. To add to this the snowfield was in a complete white out below about 9,000 feet- fortunately not precipitating but in a cloud that was keeping the heat in. Since I had about 4 GPX tracks for the Muir Snowfield on my phone I was fine. It was just slow going since I had to constantly pull out my phone and check to make sure I was on course.

I finally emerged from the fog above Panorama Point. As I glissaded down the Pan Face I could see one of my teammates ahead of me. Normally I’m a weanie about glissading with poles and not an ice axe, but this snow was so soft even I was not concerned.

I finally got to Paradise at about 6:30pm, about an hour later than the 3 hours I estimated it would take me to get down. After dropping off blue bags and permit forms, and then picking up our second car at the entrance to the West Side road, we were lucky to get dinner at The Wildberry Restaurant at Ashford (owned by a sherpa who climbed Everest faster than it took us to descend Rainier that day) before it closed.