John and I successfully summated Mt Rainier at 6:00 am on Friday. This climb was the most demanding and at times dangerous thing I have ever done. The experience was awesome and is hard to find words for. We were fortunate to have Peter Athens as our guide. Peter was very humble but we eventually learned that he is "Mr. Everest" in the climbing world as he holds the record (7 summits) for that mountain and is written about in "Into Thin Air" as being instrumental in saving Beck Weathers during the 1996 disaster on Everest. He is an incredible guy and of course John and I spent every free minute hounding him to death with questions. Below are a select few photos from our trip along with brief descriptions.

Paradise, our starting point.

 CAMP MUIR 10,000 FEET – the first part of our journey.

This was our food tent at Camp Miur.

BASE CAMP – Watch where you step to pee at night. (Note the crevasse)

UPPER BASE CAMP 11,000 FEET

This was our tent. We heard huge avalanches that shook the glacier from ice-falls behind at night.

John at our tent at upper base camp.

John (green parka) talking to Peter Athens (blue shirt). He pretty much did this the whole time…lol.

The views from upper base camp were amazing.

This is what I saw when I got at 8pm (three hours before we would get up for our summit attempt).

11pm on Thursday. We are preparing for our seven hour summit attempt.

Summit night was crazy. We had clear weather and took on some seriously steep terrain, crossing crevasses and going up roped cliffs. Half of the party had to turn back. The views were stunning as we clung to the side of a 40 degree ice slope that seemed to reach clear to the stars and have no ending. To look down you saw the moonlight reflecting off the tops of the clouds. At 13,500 feet the weather turned and we were in high winds with snow and frozen rain. Some others in our party had to turn back but John and I pressed for the summit with our guide. We had to skip any breaks as the weather was too dangerous to stop. The last push was about three hours of the hardest aerobic activity I have ever experienced. I really realized here how dangerous this could be and even questioned why we were up there. We reached the summit at roughly 6am and were the first to summit that day. The winds were so cold and visibility so low we actually had to get into a crevasse where the glacier broke away from the summit in order to rest a minute and take this summit picture. It was as cold as it looks and I dropped one of my gloves into the crevasse beneath us as we sat on a rock ledge. It disappeared into the black hole and may have fallen half way down the mountain; fortunately our guide had spare mittens.

After charging down the mountain in a never ending grind we finally got out of the weather and in a safe place to rest. This is a great photo of John. Note the smile.

I am totally wrecked.

Watch your step on the way down.

John on the rope coming down.

Peter Athens and I back at upper base camp.

What a gift to get to do this! On the way down I would have told you I'd never set foot above sea level again. I hurt that bad. Now of course I have forgotten the pain and John and I are talking about Denali. Thank you to our friends and clients who made this opportunity possible. 

Ryan Thompson