After the last few attempts on Rainier, which have been mostly successful in terms of skiing lines but unsuccessful in terms of summitting, an idea formed to try something in two days instead of the single push method. The idea came in a revelation on a previous trip to Rainier when I was hallucinating during a short break. A deity revealed something that seemed completely untenable on previous trips, namely that Rainier cannot be conquered with race bindings and plug boots in a single push. Whatever, it's not satisfying unless its challenging, you have to throw in some obstacles, stir up heavier doses of suffering, anyone can climb this in light gear, who wants to be another mountaineer, they carry ropes and shit. Like I always say, innovation is motivated by the mire of conformity. Actually I never say that, but the perfect example is Shane's full tilt boot that he customized to imitate an AT boot, except a little heavier.
After gathering the necessary info to find where there was still decent snow left, Shane, Liz and I decided the Kautz icefull route seemed to be the best option even though the Wilson Headwall has been calling peoples names for a while. Unfortunately the Wilson has crapped itself several times and I really don't like the smell of fresh crap. If I liked the smell of fresh crap, I would move to San Francisco where everyone revels in the smell of their own farts. To offset the weight of completely necessary race bindings (safety precaution) I decided to omit water from the list of necessary items. Bringing water is just another trend ingrained in the collective psyche of mainstream society by the huge corporations. Besides, its more challenging to rely on natural sources and have to "discover" water sources on the way up the mountain, kind of like an easter egg hunt. When arriving at a suitable camping spot and there are a hundred little waterfalls gently flowing off of flat rectangular rocks, it became clear that my methodology was undeniable. Liz's beautifully flowing hair had met its match.
Deciding to climb up the Fuhrer Finger the next morning seemed to be the best decision that was made, along with not bringing a clock, as we accidentally got up at 3am with the advancing sunlight simply because it felt as if it was closer to 5am. The finger is a more direct route to the summit compared with the Kautz icefall/glacier route and didn't really require roping up, except for about five minutes. Most of the bridges on the upper Nisqually glacier were pretty solid. The summit was both eventful and uneventful as none of us could hardly stand up but were stoked to have made it. It was also getting later into the afternoon and the urge to hurry and ski down was universal. The snow most of the way down was worse than it looked, suncupped with penitentes, luckily they were warm and soft, although they exhibited a slight air of arrogance depending on height. If they had been frozen we would have tried to impale ourselves on them. After some good corn turns before traversing the lower Wilson glacier we finally arrived at the car. Some crazy hooligans had drank the beer we left not really hidden under the car. Next time we'll leave an empty beer carton under the car with dog poop in it.
