Backpacker Magazine – April 2008

Shock And Awe

You think climbing Rainier is tough? Try it blind. Or with one leg. Then see who you pity.

by: Michael Perry, Photos by Gabe Rogel

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Ed Salau on the Muir Snowfield

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Salau cramponing toward the Nisqually Glacier

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Scott Smiley's climbing party on Disappointment Cleaver

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Scott Smiley

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Salau adjusts his $30,000 titanium prosthesis

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Smiley feels his way across Pebble Creek

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Salau on his knees at the foot of the volcano

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Guides Rausch and Fawley modify Salau's crampon

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Slow progress on Day 1 results in a forced bed down below Camp Muir

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Apart from the group, the guides are visibly relieved. Fawley says this is the most memorable climb since his first, the one with his father. "These guys…" says Rausch, and then he can't continue. It takes him a while, then he says, "I don't carry anybody up that mountain. But to see them…" He trails off again. "I'm in the Reserves. I got deployed in 2004 to Qatar. I've never been in harm's way. These guys…it just cuts me up. I'd carry…I'd carry everything for them."

The descent to Paradise remains. Fawley and Kittleson will escort Smiley down tonight so he can make his plane, and Salau will descend in the morning. More of the same, in reverse. But at this moment, the group vibrates with the shared euphoria of hazard and hardship overcome in a place far removed from civilization and its various complications. Adversity runs a sliding scale–elective nature hikes at the low end, Ed's leg and Scotty's eyes at the unthinkable high end–but even a hill climb such as this one can kick irony in the slats and give despair the raspberries.

Mt. Rainier is a volcano, of course. Ed didn't get there, and Scotty couldn't see it, but the summit is a vast white bowl. A crucible, you could say, from which hope might be forged.

Mt. Rainier was Michael Perry's first mountaineering trip. Based in Wisconsin, he is the author of Truck: A Love Story and Population: 485.