Rainier Report: Tuesday, July 30

8:30 a.m.: Just above Camp Schurman at 9,800 feet we awake, again, at a fairly leisurely pace. It's a good decision to get plenty of sleep given the gradual pace at which we're ascending on this trip. Plus our legs are in pain and resist the idea of getting up. We eat a welcome breakfast of cold cereal and instant milk, and begin breaking camp.

9:46 a.m.: As Keil lifts his pack to readjust the load, one of the mice that harass the food stores of campers runs out from underneath it. Keil takes a playfully angry swipe at it with his heavy plastic mountaineering boot and just misses. He and I then chase the little fiend from our area taking completely ineffective swings using snow pickets as cudgels. After a 30-foot sprint across the snow the mouse has beaten us. I hunch over my ax out of breath.

10:02 a.m.: The little mouse returns and this time Keil's well-aimed Koflach sends him flying about five feet, where we bury his thieving carcass.

10:24 a.m.: We glance up our route, the moderately steep Emmons Glacier. It winds back and forth around deep crevasses that are heavily exposed at this time of year. A lenticular cloud cap has covered the mountain's peak, but Keil and Annabel are unconcerned.

11:30 a.m.: We head out of camp, again loaded with our ridiculous packs. Can I emphasize that enough?

12:36 p.m.: We take our first rest break at the end of a long, monotonous stretch of glacier. Crevasses are few here. As we gain elevation a couple of climbers' techniques prevent us from falling over from exhaustion--pressure breathing and the rest step. Pressure breathing enables your body to endure exertion in thin air. Essentially, you consciously breath in and out hard to introduce more oxygen to your lungs than they would normally request. It's a way to fool your system into compensating. The rest step involves locking your downhill leg at every step to put as much of your weight on your skeletal structure as possible. It gives a brief moment of recovery with each step that over a long climb can make an incredible difference to burning muscles.

1:02 p.m.: The climbing is getting slightly steeper and the waning day has made the snow somewhat sloppy. I stumble briefly and inadvertently run a crampon spike through my gaiter. I'm lucky because I only narrowly missed my actual leg and snow pants. I'm unlucky because they're the gaiters I borrowed from John, my boss.

2:30 p.m.: The climbing is now not only steeper but much more varied. We must traverse around wide crevasses, cross snowbridges, and ascend the occasional chute between icefall debris. None of it is particularly dangerous, but the exposure is moderate in some places where not much snowfield is available for a self-arrest if you lose your footing. We are a rope team of five, however, which is reasonably secure. The risk is serious, but the odds of incident small.

4:02 p.m.: We come around a crevasse to a steep, almost 45-degree stretch of snow topped with a light layer of rime ice. We're almost at 12,000 feet, where Keil intends to set up our encampment. From my position as fourth on the rope team I can see Keil glancing around, as if to find a place to dig tent platforms. I'm immediately dubious because from my vantage point it looks like he's considering building our camp on a difficult, exposed slope. However, as he reels in the rest of the rope team, his intentions become clear--at the top of the pitch is an easily accessed crevasse with a covered debris pile building a perfect platform down into it. Mark belays Keil down into the crevasse so he can use his ax to probe around for weak points. After a few minutes of checking he determines it solid. We drive a picket in at each end of the crevasse and stay clipped into a rope along its length for the first half an hour as we dig our tent platforms and kitchen. The campsite couldn't be more ideal. The wall above us looks rock solid and the depth provides shelter from the wind. It's also absurdly dramatic to look at our tents pitched in a wild-looking slot in a living glacier. We make dinner and set up camp.

8:34 p.m.: We get our work done early this time and are able to turn in before dark. It's a nice luxury to not have to deal with the finer points of camping at altitude-- snow-melting, clothing management, sock-drying--with the sun already set. We're all really beat, though. My legs are beginning to get the deep soreness that's not likely to go away soon. Everyone's still in incredibly good spirits, though, and really enjoying themselves. Part of this is knowing we have only one more long burn with the pigs on our backs before we've reached the top.

Tomorrow we climb the remaining 2,500 feet or so to the summit, where we will camp and begin exploring the steam caves.