AAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

We're really tired, just ate at in-n-out burger..uh...

SO, Saturday morning we woke at 7am and drove into Yosemite, park was packed, the ranger told us that there was no camping avaiable that didn't require a 4 mile hike in....so we decided not to sleep? We did our first trad climb, sunnyside bench regular route, really fun. Then we went into the lodge restaurant so Eric could watch the BYU game. We decided to stay there until they closed, at 11, because we had no where else to go. When they closed we set up shop in the lobby to the bathrooms. Plugged in the computer and watch Live Free or Die Hard. It ended around 2am and we were so pumped up we decided that we were going to hike up alfdome by moonlight and watch the sunrise from the top. Yosemite looks completely different at night, especially with an almost full moon and not a cloud in the sky. We arrived on the summit around 6am, we had been awake for 23 hours. We made a few friends on the summit but didn't linger, we were the first to head down after sunrise. Trail ran down some of the trail and made it to the lodge cafe for breakfast by 10am. Then, took showers, packed up, and headed out. Now we are at a borders in Bakersfield CA, driving to Whitney tonight, hopefully starting the climb tomorrow morning...

Rainier to Yosemite-Road Trip

This is just a small post of our drive from Mt. Rainier in Washington to Yosemite National Park in California. We Camped out the night after Rainier near Hood River, OR. The town of Hood River is very nice. It is a small outdoors town with a great pizza shop. Since we just climbed Rainier, we had to order the "Volcano" pizza. Our camp site that night was very easy to get to, only about 40 yards from the Interstate! We were tired enough that the sound of the passing cars didnt effect our sleep too much; however, we soon realized our sleep would be interupted by freight trains rumbling through the campsite all throughout the night.
It was amazing what we could sleep through after climbing a 14,000 foot glaciated peak. The next morning we headed into Portland, OR to post up the Blog and Pics of our Mt. Rainier climb. Once that was taken care of we drove out to the Oregon Coast and camped out near the beach for the night. This time we only had the sound of the ocean to help put us to sleep and we even got to take showers in the morning! From the coast we continued our drive south and met up with Hatchback's friend in Medford, OR for lunch. We also had to pick up some climbing ropes that were shipped to him. We stuffed our faces with as much all you can eat pasta, salad, and breadsticks we could at the Olive Garden. (Hatchback hooked it up with a gift card)
Since we ate so much at lunch there was no way any of us could handle eating dinner that night. We continued our drive through Oregon and made our way through California as well. We stopped by Mt. Shasta to snap a few pics and moved along. We drove into the night until we got as close to Yosemite as we could, found a campground, set up the tent, crawled into our sleeping bags and prepared ourselves as best we could for the Yosemite Marathon to come!

Mt. Rainier was AWESOME!!!...but I never want to do that again...

We arrived at Paradise Ranger Station at 8am. The ranger informed us that the only route still climbable on the south side of the mountain was Disappointment Cleaver route. So, we packed up and hit the trail at 9:30am. Parking lot was packed with guide services taking people up the mountain, probably 30+ people. We hiked from Paradise (5500ft) to Camp Muir (10000ft), beautiful hike. Arrived at Camp Muir shortly after 2pm, and to our amazement THERE WAS A CASTLE FOR US TO SLEEP IN!!! well, it's really just a little bunk house made out stone, but it is kind of in the shape of a little castle...we had planned on packing the three of us into a two man tent, so we were super excited.

Afternoon at Muir: ate ramen and mashed potatoes for lunch, had a little nap nap in the sweet bunk castle, woke up to the sound of two europeans blabbing about something. They were fully decked out in climbing gear, harnesses on, roped up...but it was almost 4 in the afternoon. You only climb a mountain like Rainier by moonlight, when the ice is strongest(coldest). I asked them, “are you guys going up” “YA!” the bigger one said, and smiled...I drifted back to sleep...I woke the second to lots of commotion, people talking about a helicopter rescue!?! WHAT THE CHEESE!?! Went out side and Ranger Felip was in a flight suit and helmet talking with the helicopter that was in route. We climbed about fifty feet up the ridge and watch the helicopter drop in and pick up this guy who we think had a heart attack...very cool to watch (I'm still a little obsessed with PJ's). Dinner came next, freeze dried meals, then a thirty minute snow melt session (thanks a lot to the solo guy for letting us borrow his water filter) to get enough water for that nights climb. Crawled into our sleeping bags around 7:30pm.

12:30am castle bunk was going berserk! The two Europeans (Hanz and Franz aka team Holland aka two really nice pilots who were on a one week layover in Seattle) were busy roping up, solo guy was heading out the door, team NewYork (two native New Yorkers and one Australian) were having a team meating...one of them was feeling ill. We had pop tarts for breakfast, geared up, the hit the climb. As soon as we stepped out side we felt the wind...blowing really hard...REALLY hard...we dropped onto Cowlitz Glacier out of the wind. Crystal clear night, moon and stars shining, you could climb without your light on it was so bright! We looked out across the glacier and saw many groups of headlamps headed up. This glacier was easily crossed and at its end we climb on loose scree to the top of Cathedral Gap. On the other side of the Gap we traversed Ingraham Glacier to the scree ridge known as Disappointment Cleaver. We were on the cleaver for about and hour and a half, scrambling on rocks and loose scree (in crampons, roped up, very awkward). At the top we traversed onto Emmons Glacier, it would be ice and snow from here on out. Route finding here was relatively easy as the guide services had marked their route with little red flags, so we just followed the flags.

Most parties were easily passed as we caught them, until we reached one section of pretty steep ice. We got stuck behind one of the RMI groups, because they were belaying their clients up. So we waited, it was about 4am, temps bellow freezing, water in my bladder was frozen, wind was blasting, the wind chill was probalby -1000 or something crazy...not a good place to sit down and wait. We caught up with our solo friend here and joked about hot tubs and steak dinners...As soon as the route allowed, we passed the last of the guided trips and were free to zoom up the top section of the mountain (by zoom I mean Johnny was in front setting a killer pace and Eric and I were just hanging on).

SUN!!! Finally the sun came up as we were approaching the crater rim. It's amazing how your mood changes when the sun rises, you can see all the beauty around you, you warm up a little, you don't feel alone on a cold mountain anymore. We dropped into the rim out of the wind for a food break, then dropped our packs for the final push to the summit.

7am Standing on the summit, mix of emotions, I shed a few tears, not a long time to celebrate though, the wind was blasting us, we think around 40 or 50 mph (see video below).

DOWN

We descended into the clouds and visibility quickly went from 20 miles to 20 feet...but, the route was so well traveled that we had no problem finding our way down. Descending the cleaver was especially interesting, our faces constantly being stung by wind and rocks. At the bottom of the cleaver we sat down to put our crampons on before stepping back onto Ingraham Glacier. Solo was there and he told us about some group of climbers who were killed by rock fall right where we were sitting. We quickly jumped (three foot crevasse) to get onto the glacier and out of rockfall danger. I was last to get on the glacier, and as soon as I was a safe distance away the wind blasted the cleaver and unhinged a boulder the size of Eric's hatchback. It crashed down exactly where we had been sitting...If we had stayed literally 60 seconds longer we would have been crushed by the rock fall and ended up at the bottom of an icy grave...

we weren't lucky, it was not luck that kept us out of harms way. It was not chance that delivered us at just the right moment...I believe we were kept safe by the one who causes the wind to blow, the one who could tell the mountains to move and they would obey...

Got back to our caltle in the sky at 11:30, 10 hours round trip. WE WERE SO TIRED, jumped into our sleeping bags for a 45min nap nap. Again, I woke up to the sounds of team Holland blabbing about something. We packed up, took a picture with our European friends, then hiked 2 ½ hours back to the car...exhausted...

Camped last night between a freight rail road and the highway, constant cars and train whistles about every hour...we all slept straight thru the night:)

now we are in Portland, at Coffee Time, not sure where we are headed...