Let's get physical
Some of you who have known me throughout my 32 year history with X10 will know that I like a physical challenge as well as the mental challenge that I get from my work.
When I was 39 I earned a Black Belt in Karate. When I was 45 I completed the New York City Marathon. I'm now 55 (and living in WA State) so I thought what better challenge than to climb Mt. Rainier.
I decided to do this last year and have been running 5 miles most days since then. This April I hiked up Mt. Si. The following week I hiked Tiger Mountain. I have pretty much done one or the other every weekend since then. This past weekend I climbed to Camp Muir on Mt. Rainier to get a feel for what the "real climb" will be like.
I went with a friend from work, Kevin, and his girlfriend Patty. They are avid hikers and Kevin has already climbed Mt. Rainier, and has been to Camp Muir many times. We started from a place aptly called Paradise (photo below).
We started from an elevation of 5,400 ft. and climbed to 10,060 ft., over about 4 miles. That's about the same as Mt. Si in terms of distance, but much steeper and in snow the whole way. Whereas Mt. Si takes about 2 hours to climb, this took us 5 hours and 18 minutes.
Kevin has a portable GPS unit that tells you just about everything except what you had for breakfast that morning. After we'd been out for 4½ hours he looked at it and told me our elevation, how many miles we'd walked, our average speed, average elevation gain, etc., etc. It also told us how long we'd been moving and how long we'd been stopped. Much to my surprise, for the first 4½ hours we'd been climbing for 3 hours and stopped for 1½ hours. Must have been all those photos we took. :-)
But actually you tend to stop for a rest quite often and all those minutes add up. For the first 4 hours it seemed "relatively" easy. Then it got to the point where I was "rest stepping" every 3 steps. Then as we were nearing Camp Muir, for about the last half an hour I was taking one step then resting, one step then resting. Every time I tried to take several steps I ended up resting for a longer period of time, so it was better to just settle into a very slow steady plod.
On the way down we "Glissaded" i.e., slid down some of the steep parts on our butts. Cheating a bit, but great fun! I doubt that the Mountaineering outfit I'll climb with in 2 weeks time will let us do that.
Much to my surprise the next morning I wasn't very sore. I must be getting used to this. I was however extremely tired. I didn't get up until noon. When I do the "big climb" I have to leave for New York on business the next day, and so I will have to get up early to catch a flight. That will be "interesting."
This was one of the hardest things I've ever done, but I had the most fun doing it! And the views were breathtaking!
Reaching the summit (14,410 ft.) requires a vertical elevation gain of more than 9,000 ft. over a distance of eight or more miles. So the second half is about the same distance as the first half, (that I did this weekend), and about the same elevation gain. But it's harder because you just did it, and have to do it again, with little sleep, and suffering from the affects of altitude.
Although climbing to Camp Muir was tough, I think it will seem easy after I climb the whole thing on July 16, and 17.