Dedication: To Betty, my deceased wife of 31 years and a New Jersey transplant who taught me to appreciate the Northwest’s outdoors. Her blue backpack followed me closely up Mount Adams.
The point of climbing Mount Adams was to experience the sensations of high altitude similar to Cuzco, Peru, where I will be heading in barely a week. After two climbs on Mount Rainier, with the second obtaining an altitude of 8,700 feet, reaching Adams’ 12,300-foot summit seemed within reach. But Adams was nothing like Rainier. Rainier was cold. Adams was unexpectedly hot. What had promised to be a challenging climb for me became an impossible one, due to miscalculations and equipment failure.
Bigger than Rainier
Adams is a big mountain – bigger than Rainier, though not as high. Situated 31 miles east of Mount St. Helens, it covers 250 square miles, with its eastern slope part of the Yakima nation. Its volume is 85 cubic miles, second only to Mount Shasta in the category of Cascade stratovolcanoes. According to Wikipedia, its main cone was built when Adams was covered by a glacier in the last ice age. When lava came in contact with the ice, it shattered. Constant heat and caustic gasses has broken down much of its rock into clays, iron oxides, quartz and sulfur-rich compounds. There is so much sulfur on the mountain that there was interest in mining it during the 20th Century. Separate vents generated cone-building eruptions. There is a false summit on the south side, reaching 11,500 feet. The highest point is a small lava cone 800 feet higher.
Like Rainier, Adams is largely covered by snow, and you are literally “walking on water” when you ascend. Unlike Rainier, Adams is close to the Columbia River, whose microclimate yielded plenty of sunshine and warmer air.
There are some great views, like this one of Mount St. Helens:
Exhaustion and dehydration
I dressed for Rainier, wearing ski pants while my companions, Roger and Ron, wore cutoffs. In the interest of carrying less I left behind my safari pants, thinking they wouldn’t be warm enough once we were on snow, and therefore guaranteeing I would sweat—especially at moments like the one below, where the climb was pretty steep and the likelihood of sliding backward was real. The top edge of this particular bank, where the snow becomes increasingly vertical is called a "lip," and there was one like this beaconing us at the false summit. (I found out later that Roger had deliberately led us up this path to prepare us for the much scarier one at the false summit.)
We started at 5,600 feet and camped the first night at 8,600 feet, planning to find a fresh water source at elevation. We didn’t. Dripping with sweat, having exhausted my two liters of water, I found myself dehydrated and very tired. Roger was tired also: When I asked him to pull one of two water bottles out of my pack, he handed me the empty one. It was clearly time to camp, and we stopped 400 feet short of our initial goal, an area called the “lunch counter.”
We started at 5,600 feet and camped the first night at 8,600 feet, planning to find a fresh water source at elevation. We didn’t. Dripping with sweat, having exhausted my two liters of water, I found myself dehydrated and very tired. Roger was tired also: When I asked him to pull one of two water bottles out of my pack, he handed me the empty one. It was clearly time to camp, and we stopped 400 feet short of our initial goal, an area called the “lunch counter.”
Rock Island Lines
The lunch counter is characterized by several lava rock outcrops. They are stretches of rock islands in a sea of white and are populated with “stone igloos.” The lava can be smooth or jagged, with small flat sandy places where tents may be situated. Over the years individuals—probably hikers—have stacked lava stones into circular walls to protect tents from the elements. After setting up the tent, Roger acknowledged this likely would be his last climb of Adams. He had made 10 ascents of Adams, the last one seven years ago, when he was 60. We used his camp stove to melt some water for the morning. I ate a sandwich, and had a hot drink. Roger suggested waiting until morning to melt more drinking water.
Night
At night, the Milky Way was clearly visible, as was the Drinking Gourd, which floated just above the summit. One of its stars blinked on and off, perhaps due to clouds by the mountain. A meteor disappeared over the horizon. The stars weren’t as bright as I had expected. To the west there was a dim glow, and farther south, lights from some town were visible beyond several rows of foothills. It was warm. I lay down atop the $180 mummy bag I had bought after nearly freezing on Rainier. Later I crawled into the bag.
Morning
Sometime during the wee hours, the air had become frigid and I needed gloves and a couple wraps to stay warm. But it still was much warmer than Rainier. This is how the false summit looked at daybreak. Those tiny dots are climbers.
Die another day
Roger started up his cook stove for oatmeal and to melt more water. Like last night there was a small flame coming out of a tiny opening in the stove. Strange…This morning that tiny flame grew, and suddenly the entire stove was engulfed. A seal had broken and our heat source for melting additional water was gone.
Yes, we’re surrounded by water. It’s everywhere. But with all the people who have climbed up Adams, I’m reminded of Tallulah Bankhead’s comment that she was “pure as the driven slush.” I’d like to boil my water if possible before drinking it. After a very light meal the night before, an exhausting workout that represented only half our ascent, virtually no breakfast prior to a 3,700-foot climb, only one liter of water to drink when two proved to be insufficient the day before, and a camp stove that self-destructed, I remembered a homily an Army major shared with us at Defense Information School 43 years ago: “Death is nature’s way of telling you it’s time to slow down.” That burning stove was an omen. Dozens of hikers were heading for the summit Sunday, but I wasn’t going to be one of them.
Roger and Ron strapped on crampons and went ahead, deciding to settle for the false summit.
Due to the large number of climbers, they separated confidently, and Ron was back at camp by 2:30 p.m. Roger returned by 4 p.m. It took them several hours to reach the false summit and 10 minutes to glissade back down. The photo below tells you what Roger saw halfway down the long slide.
Lost
Having sat around all day roasting on the snow field and consuming most of my liquids, I was impatient to set out, and I plunge-stepped downhill, leaving Ron and Roger behind, and eventually hidden behind an undulation of the snowbank. When I next saw them, they had glissaded into a deep ravine and I was on a slope above, negotiating a snow hazard – a slump that bordered the Rock Island Line of lava outcrop that offered a safer descent. I took the Rock Island Line, ‘cause its zig-zag path looked like a mighty good road. But that road led me to choosing between a rock or snow cliff descent. Roger and Ron were nowhere in sight. I hiked back uphill, basking in the thought that I would spend another night on the mountain with Roger’s tent all to myself, while he and Ron would have to share a one-man tent after consuming chili and onions the day before.
Found
But Ron was waiting uptrail – they had been following my tracks. We backtracked further to a flag I had ignored earlier because it directed me down a 70-degree slope. I had thought there would be a better route and was reluctant to descend the shady side of a slope where the snow likely was already freezing. However, waiting on a rock near the flag was a marmot, a symbolic St. Christopher, promising me safe passage.
Trust me
If the marmot wasn’t enough, there was always Roger, the undying optimist and messiah of snow hiking, telling me this was the way. Walking on this kind of water is fun for him, while I, like Peter, (“Oh ye, of little faith”) tend to sink quickly as soon as I step out of the boat.
Descending this bank was like walking down a ladder, facing outward, with our only handrail being our ice axes, which we jammed into the snowbank, while we slid or stamped our feet into the depressions left by the last courageous soul who preceded us down this precipitous route. Ron led, tried to cross a glissade path and plunged into the trough, making an immediate and very impressive ice axe arrest that stopped him cold. And then, what-the-hell, he continued the plunge, gliding to the bottom while Roger and I crab-walked down.
Fame
The only other event of note before we reached our car and campsite at 8 p.m. was running into a troupe of boy scouts who had made it all the way to the summit (grrrrrrrrr), and who asked if I was the Robert that had gotten lost and for whom Roger and Ron had been yelling. That’s 30 minutes of fame I could have done without.
The next chapter should be coming to you from Cuzco. We’ll see.
Love,
Robert
Love,
Robert
P.S. Here are some additional photos you may enjoy:
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