Last year in the middle of the pandemic I decided I needed a challenge more bold than going to the gym or working out with friends 5 days a week. As many of you know by now, I landed on trying to summit Mount Everest, and raise $10,000 for a charitable organization. The first (real) step in my Mount Everest training journey was to summit one of the mountains on the west coast. After watching a ted talk about a guy who trained for Everest by summiting higher and higher peaks, I decided to try the same thing. I googled a list of challenging mountains in the U.S. and this is the list I came up with (link below). I ranked each mountain on this list by height, picked 4 at random, and spread them out on a calendar in front of Everest, and this was the beginning of the journey.
List of Mountains
Ted Talk
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2a9EVaTMfdw
Mount Saint Helens was at the top of his list, so I started there. At 8,363 feet of elevation, it was easily the highest peak I would try to climb to date. And I really didn't have any idea how high that was relative to anything I had done before. I didn't know anything about mountaineering and basically picked this one blind based on the link above. I saw it was snow capped. Wikipedia said beginners had done it before. And that was it. Anyway as I said in a previous blog post, we applied for the permit and crossed our fingers.
Our teams permit was approved, and we planned to summit on Friday, May 14, 2021. I called the Mount Saint Helens Institute a week before to confirm that the base of the mountain had dispersed camping (we could cap wherever we want). To my surprise, she said the Monitor Ridge Route (the route we were planning to take) was basically snowed in. All the roads in and out of there were covered in ice, and the only trail available was the Worm Flows Trail. The Worm Flows trail is an extra 2 miles, with an additional 1,000 feet of elevation. By that time it was too late to turn back or reschedule, so we had to just plan accordingly.
A few days later I flew into Seattle with a friend on Tuesday, and we spent some time in Seattle having dinner and walking around the city. The volcano was about 3 hours south of Seattle near the Oregon border, so we had to drive down in a rental car. When it was time to pick up the rental car the day before the hike, we went called enterprise from a breakfast place to confirm that they had an all wheel drive SUV.
A lady answered and kindly confirmed that she had us down for a 4 wheel drive SUV, "Tahoe or similar." Excited, we hopped in an Uber and drove straight to Enterprise. When we arrived, they told us we would have to wait and it was going to be a few hours before we could get a car. I was so confused. I had literally just gotten off the phone with them to confirm they had our car.
Disappointed, I looked out into the parking lot. Our Uber was gone. The only cars there were two 15-passanger vans, and a Tesla Model S. After some back and forth about how I couldn't believe they didn't have a car ready, I asked about the van. "Is that all wheel drive?" they said it wasn't. "What about the tesla?" I asked...
He said it was considered an exotic car, and they would charge us $200 a day for it. I was still pretty annoyed. I had just confirmed a Tahoe over the phone within an hour from this photo. We didn't have time to lose though, so we drove off the lot with the Tesla, with all our camping gear in the back. We were still annoyed, but at least now we were on our way to the mountain. The car drove pretty smooth too.
We camped out the night before, woke up early on Friday, and with a few hundred other hikers putting on boots and jackets, we got our gear on in the dark before sunrise and started up the mountain. The first part of the trail was tame, but it got pretty steep within a mile or two. The story of getting to the top was pretty uneventful given how crazy the rest of the day went. It was basically us getting hot, taking off our jackets, and then freezing and putting them back on. There was also lots of heavy breathing and complaining. This went on for about 5 hours. Each time we thought we reached the summit, we climbed higher only to find that there was actually an even taller/steeper hill further ahead. I was so tired, I drained the last of my water bottle, thinking- if I run out later i'll just fill it up with snow and let it melt. I was so close, I didn't care if I ran out of water.
One by one we reached the summit sweaty and tired, but feeling gratified. Near the top we noticed people sliding down on thier butt for the first 100 yards or so, and then getting up and walking the rest of the way down. We took a bunch of photos at the top, ate a few snacks, and got ready to make our way down the mountain. Our legs were so tired, we decided to try sliding down too. Thats where the trouble started.... haha
There was a guy who was really familiar with the mountain beside me. I asked him how it worked, he said just put your jacket under your butt, slide down a little ways, and then get up and walk over to the next hill. They call it glassliding. Everyone was doing it. My legs were dead. He asked if I wanted to go first or of he should go ahead and show me. I told him I would go first.
So I slid down, it was pretty slow at first, this seemed like one of those things everyone would be good at except for me, and thats basically what happened. Everyone else slid down at like 10 miles an hour. For me it was much slower, maybe 3mph, but it was still better than walking all the way down.! After sliding down for 250 yards or so, I stopped, got up and looked around. There was no one around me. weird. I packed some snow into my water bottle and tried to stay positive.
I saw there were tracks from other people sliding down on their butts, so I kept going, thinking I would see more people on the way down, but still there was no one. I figured I would see people if I just kept walking downward, after all, I came down sort of the same way everyone else came, and I was just following someone elses butt tracks. After a while it dawned on me, I slid too far. I turned around and looked back, it was waay to steep to walk back up and find my way. So I kept walking down.
An hour went by, but still I saw no one. One hour turned into two, and then three. Still no one. I did see a few sets of footprints, but I couldn't tell if they were from today, or yesterday, or when!? Anyway I followed them hoping the stranger who left them knew where they were going. I got down to the tree line and the tracks disappeared. It was starting to get dark. I looked around, no one in sight. I started to think. I had my head-lamp in my backpack along with a few snacks, but that was it. If I had to spend the night in the woods and find my way back in the morning, I was going to freeze my butt off out there.
After what seemed like an endless amount of time I took out my phone to confirm that I didn't have service. Service was basically zero. I had 3% battery left. Before we began the hike thoug, I dropped a pin on the map at the starting point. I could see that I was close, but there was a small river between where we parked/camped, and where I was standing. SHIT! I couldn't even see how far it was but it didnt look far. As much as I hated to do it, I started walking back up the mountian to go around the river and work my way back down.
Eventually I found my way, stopping to chug some melted snow and eat what was left of the snacks in my backpack along the way. My phone made it down to 2% and I texted my team to let them know I was lost (When I say "team" here, I"m talking about a group of friends who were just as clueless about navigating the mountain as I was." I got to the bottom about 4 hours after expected, and 2-3 hours after everyone else, only to find out that they had all done the same thing. We all slid down one by one. And one by one we each got lost, wandered around, and eventually found our way back. How they got back before me, I'll never konw. It made for a great adventure though. After we laughed and joked about the journey, we got in our cars and went and had dinner at a local restaurant nearby.
Although we made a ton of mistakes and got completely lost along the way, we still had a great time and laughed about it till we fell asleep in our tent. My ego had lost. I summitted, but ultimately the mountain had won. It made for a great adventure though, and I now knew what 8,300 feet felt like. I have a 60 mile race coming up in about a month, where runners run 18 miles Friday, 20 miles Saturday, and 22 miles Sunday. I'm looking forward to running this with a few friends of mine. Next years challenge is Grand Teton, and I'm planning to have several training hikes on various mountains and trials over the next 12 months. So stay tuned! (much more pics coming soon)
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