Mt. Rainier 14,411ft.:  Liberty Ridge,  June 13-14, 2002

Team:  Bill Frans, Jeromy Waddell, Jon Denham, Sam Avaiusini

Click here for a map of our route: 

Made a trip up Liberty Ridge with 3 friends.  Left WRCG at 9am after meeting a team of 3 kids who had just driven all night from Utah.  From the looks of it, they were going to have themselves an epic.  It didn't appear that either of them had any 2nd tools.  However, they did have a rubber mallet to "slam those pickets in real good." (No joke) My team looked at one another, and cringed.  They also said they had no map OR any previous experience on Rainier.  My partner, Jon loaned them a spare topo and gave them his address for its return.  We wished them the good luck they were going to need and we were on our way.

We made it out to the Carbon in pretty good time. The Glacier was in excellent shape and the line was obvious to the base of the ridge. 

We traveled as 2 rope teams of two on 2 30 meter ropes.  The first 500ft. of the lower ridge was melted-out and made for some interesting maneuvers before we made it back onto the snow. Please note:  there are a couple places before you get to Thumb Rock where there is running water!  Finish any extra water you may have left, and fill-up here!  The water is quite "grit-free."  We arrived at a deserted Thumb Rock around 6:30pm. 

Several nice platforms had already been made by previous parties and we were in bed quickly thanks to very little need to melt snow. 

We were on route by 6:30am, traveling solo due to excellent footing.  Some rock fall on the initial climb out of camp (leftmost variation).  We were greeted with a short-lived ice pellet squall to make things interesting.

At about 12,400 we roped-up and started running belays up the face to the top of the Black Pyramid.  The snow was mostly a couple inches of rotten sugar over very hard, sometimes black, ice.  Those boys from Utah weren't going to be needing that rubber mallet.  Screws were the only choice and the placements were bomber!  We saw 3 busted tent poles strewn about on the face.  Why they stopped here and didn't go rocketing down the mountain, I just don't know!  My guess is that they were remnants of the fatalities up there a couple weeks ago.

After a short food break, we were on our way to the final pitch up the bergschrund.  Nice, steep water ice here with a short traverse under a tiny ice cliff.  My partner Jeromy, who lead this part, actually broke the pick on his KONG aluminum axe and finished the pitch with his CM Axar.  The purple pick, which I'm sure is still stuck in the ice, stands as a reminder:  Aluminum headed axes don't do well on bulletproof ice.

At Liberty Cap we were greeted by mostly clear skies and 40mph winds.

By the time we were heading across the plateau and slightly up the summit cone, we were engulfed in a lenticular.  We bumbled around for close to 2 hours (seemed like forever) in the cloud, looking for a way down.  Most directions we headed seemed to put us above big gaping 'schrunds.  We were about 5 minutes from giving up and heading to the crater for an epic night in high winds, when the clouds broke and we could see our line, even a wand about 300 feet below.  Our senses did us well as were not far off route. 

We left Camp Schurman at about 9:30pm under clear skies and crescent moon, climbing the gully to the top of the Prow.  

39 Hours car to car.

Dinner at Shari's in Renton at 2am.

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