Rainier Report: Thursday, August 1

Inside the steam caves

8:45 a.m.: I wake up. My legs are more reluctant. I pull on my boots to check the weather and duck out of the tent for a moment with nature. Almost three miles of air stacked below, between me and the Puget Sound. Seattle is socked in, covered by a low bank of clouds. On the summit of Mount Rainier, it's clear and blue, though windy and cold. August 1 on the summit feels like a beautiful winter morning.

9:45 a.m.: We've been struggling with the transmission process from the summit. Now we can't even get cell service. Last night Mark got in a little bit of a tense debate with a cellular operator who wouldn't put our call through. Apparently the fact that we were on Mount Rainier with a waning cell phone battery wasn't enough to convince Operator Laurie that we deserved the right to place the call. We're still not sure what the problem was. Soon, we'll scout along the ridge in search of a better connection location for the cell phone. Will report back soon.

3:00 p.m.: After a frustrating hour on a windblown ridge re-establishing our cellular phone connection, we left for the main crater to explore the steam caves, at last.

As we descended a saddle next to Columbia Crest, the true summit of the mountain at the meeting point of the two summit craters, we saw Keil and Annabel emerge from the a cave near the crater rim. They led Anthony, Mark, and I to an opening they had scouted out on the north rim of the crater.

We made our way in slowly. The pitch of the initial section was fairly steep, perhaps 50 degrees, though this varied from area to area on the crater depending on the pile-up of the volcanic gravel and choss. The initial entrance allowed us to walk mostly upright for the first 20 or 30 feet of descent. A bluish light shown from thinner portions of the snow ceiling above us, hinting at the dangers of walking unprotected on the surface snow near the crater rim. Punching through could happen anywhere.

Keil pauses momentarily before continuing his descent

We then came to a tight section requiring us to crawl on our hands and knees along the now roughly 45-degree scree slope. After only a few feet we emerged in a more massive cavern, perhaps 50 feet above us was the roof of snow. The walls and ceiling were of mixed snow and hard ice, all in an eerily smooth, scalloped pattern.

We walked down to the debris ridge, a level accumulation of rock at the bottom of the melted chasm, and began making our way in a generally easterly direction. The roof of snow above us now varied from 25 to 50 feet in height. We estimated we had descended 250 feet into the summit ice cap before turning to walk parallel to the perimeter in this main passage. No more light leaked down into our area, and headlamps showed the way.

After about two hours, we glanced up the slope to our left and saw a slight bleeding of blue light at the top of one of the caverns. We investigated and emerged on the summit crater again--only now at the southern, and completely opposite, side from where we emerged.

5:00 p.m.: After returning from the steam caves, we sank into our tents for a rest. I started shuffling my notes to begin writing up our walk through the steam caves. Mark began working the phone over in an attempt to re-establish our flukey cell connection. Eventually he got through to Brenda, one of our support team members. She informed him that the National Weather Service was predicting an "unusually severe series of weather systems" to hit the area by Friday afternoon. That system already had a big wall of moist air in front of it and by Friday night the freeze level was expected to drop to around 6,000 feet. That meant bad news for us.

Keil joined us in the tent a few moments later and Mark filled him in on the weather report. A pit started to develop in my stomach. A freezing level of 6,000 feet meant the summit, 8,000 feet higher, would get down to around 16 degrees. With the windchill and moisture, that could make life difficult. Worse, the weather was expected to linger until Monday. I noticed the wind start to pick up speed as we sat. Annabel came into the tent with a bowl of food. We all began eating in a circle, discussing our next move.

Keil seemed unconcerned. I asked if it would make sense to descend now, even though it was getting dark. He said no, he'd rather go down tomorrow at first light. We peeked out the tent door and saw an angry wall of clouds far off above the Puget Sound--not columns of isolated thundershowers, but a big, mean front rolling our way. At this altitude visibility was going to drop to nothing in a few hours.

I started to get scared. Though not panicked, my mind raced with the possible outcomes and actions. I was in way over my head this exposed on a serious mountain with that kind of weather coming at us. I knew a forced bivy on the summit for three days could be disastrous. I also knew I did not have a chance in hell of finding my way down in a whiteout. That put my life--completely--in Keil's hands. With 96 summits of Rainier, I logically believed he had it in control. But instinctivelly my mind raced with fear as I confronted a situation well beyond me. Besides, even the most experienced mountaineers get killed by storms. And if Keil was scared and unable to get us through it, he certainly would never let it show, for fear of rattling the group.

The other members handled it variously. Anthony took it in stride. He was a tough guy and had seen many epic situations. Still, I thought, he's from Hawaii. I wasn't sure whether he was confident or if he just didn't understand the gravity of a high mountain storm. Mark looked stressed, but he had a great deal of trust in Keil's abilities. Annabel supported Keil's leadership, expressing his same assurances that we would be okay. I wasn't entirely convinced, though--her face read more worry than she let on.

Keil said we'd wait until first light, then bail. He said he'd watch the weather and if things got bad enough, we'd descend sometime in the night.

In any event, the storm was already picking up. With each gust the tent creaked and bowed. The canopy on the windward side slapped in and out. I crawled into my bag, hoping to just go to sleep and await our departure. I snoozed for about an hour until a particularly strong series of gusts got a grip under the tent floor and lifted my head and dropped it twice. The storms was now howling so loudly I couldn't hear anything. I put in a set of ear plugs (brought for tentmate's snoring) to drown out the fearsome roar of the wind.

It was too late, though. There was no sleeping in my future. I laid there fitfully, obsessing on our situation. My mind flitted wildly from outcome to outcome and possible solutions. Nothing in my experience prepared me for a situation of this size. We had to descend 8,000 feet of steep, treacherously crevassed mountain down a route I'd never seen--and it looked like we'd have to do it in a whiteout. I resigned myself to trusting Keil and tried to rest as much as possible.

Outside, the storm continued to worsen and now snow and hail added their sprinkling clatter to the wind's hammering. I could only wait for first light, staring at the swaying dome tent above me.