Ryan flew into Seattle on Saturday and after the 30-minute turbo-tour of Seattle’s hotspots, we grabbed some grub, caught up and called it early. We went shopping for gear and supplies on Sunday, then drove down to Ashford, WA to begin our trek.

The 3-day summit climb begins with a day of climbing school where you load up a limited amount of gear into your pack and hike up to approximately 7,000ft and learn basic climbing skills, crampon usage, pressure breathing, team-arrest and self-arrest techniques in the event of a fall. The day is pretty relaxed and not too strenuous. You get to meet your guides as well as some of the people that you’ll be roping up with on the upper mountain. That day starts around 9am and ends in the late afternoon, which means you get to relax and grab a beer before you gear up for the big climb.

The next day starts around 9am again, but this time you have a backpack full of 40lbs of gear and food on your back. You hike from Paradise (5,000ft) up to Camp Muir (10,000ft) in about five hours. The hike consists of about 2 hours hiking on pavement and dirt paths that are generally consumed by tourists on the weekends. Following that is a good 3 hours on the Muir Snowfield where you think that little shack at the top of the hill is never going to get any closer. But after many steps and thoughts of “why am I hauling this huge pack up this mountain on my back”, you reach it…and you’re very happy to relieve the weight off your back.

After a brief rest, you start unpacking your bag and bringing most stuff inside the bunkhouse. Then organizing your pack for the upper mountain, dinner, and a talk by the guides to prepare for what’s next. This is the point where your mind starts racing and your heart starts beating a little faster. You’re at Camp Muir - the climb up was pretty taxing…and you know that in a mere 5 hours, you’ll be waking up and heading for the top. So you roll out your sleeping bag. Crawl in. And try to sleep. But it’s five-o-clock in the evening. And when you’ve just eaten, at least for me, my metabolism jumps through the roof. So you turn. And you toss. And you try to think of different ways to fall asleep. You close your eyes. You open them. You stare at the wall. But nothing works. Until finally…finally you doze off. Only to be woken up what seems to be five minutes after you fell asleep by the guides turning on the lights and saying it’s time to get ready!

At this point, it’s about 11:30pm. You wake up, make yourself some oatmeal and slap on your base layer, climbing pants, fleece, avalanche beacon, and helmet. You stumble out into the darkness along with about 15 other people and get your pack ready. Soon enough, you find yourself roped up to 3 other people and heading out across a glacier toward what’s known as Cathedral Gap.

That’s the view you have in the daytime, but at night it’s just you, your head lamp, and a rope strung out in front of you. Except for this climb where we had a nearly-full moon and barely even needed our headlamps. The next 6 hours are more or less a blur of repetitive, focused steps up the mountain. The guides say it takes approximately 80,000 steps to make it up Rainier…and when you’re sidestepping up a plateau of snow not much wider than your own boots at 1am…you quickly believe that it’s true.

I like to say about my summit climb this time that it was more difficult than I remember, but somehow easier. Part of that is the route difference. As opposed to climbing Disappointment Cleaver, we had to skirt around the bottom of that and then climb up via the Emmons Glacier. This is due to the crevasses that have opened up (as is typical late in the season) at the top of the cleaver. Although the Emmons portion was difficult in its own right, I have no disappointment about not having to climb for an hour over rock with crampons on. Descending via Emmons was also much easier than climbing back down the cleaver. I think what also helped is that I was much better prepared this time in terms of knowing what to expect.

Nevertheless, after hours of climbing I reached the summit successfully for the second time.

I was pretty excited - it was an amazingly beautiful day to summit. The guides said it had to be one of the top 4 days of the season. What do you think?

Perhaps I’ll post more eventually, but for now - here’s me at the top of Mt. Rainier on a beautiful day. Feel free to check out the rest of the Flickr photos of my Rainier Summit.

On my return to Seattle, I recovered for a few days only to welcome my parents into town. I had a great time with them doing all sorts of touristy stuff. We had dinner the first night at Ivar’s Salmon House. Apparently, my father’s charm was in full swing that night as the hostess seated us at a table with a perfect view of Lake Union and downtown Seattle. We all enjoyed an excellent salmon dinner, which my mother claimed was the best she had ever had. A couple nights later, we decided to take a walk down to Gasworks after dinner and stumbled upon some lavish event that was in progress. It was totally unexpected, but pretty crazy to see 10 tour ducks roll into Gasworks and unload 300 people. We also checked out the Japanese Gardens, the sculpture park, the Space Needle (of course), Pikes Place Market (of course), The Underground Tour, and a driving tour of Fremont, Wallingford, Greenlake, Cap Hill, Ballard, and downtown. Finally, on their last night we wandered around trying to decide what to have for dinner. We finally agreed that I would make a nice pork chop dinner on my back porch. My mother’s camera has the pictures, but it turned out to be a great dinner with great food, great wine, and great company. A suiting end to a great few days.

The other highlight of the weekend was the Arthur Murray Summer Showcase. This event was the first time my parents had ever seen me perform in ballroom dancing, with the exception of the couple videos I’ve sent them. Despite the looooong day (9am-10pm), I think they enjoyed themselves, but I know they particularly did when they were able to see the spectacular Joe and Leisa Howard perform mere feet away from where they were sitting. The Howard’s were also adjudicators during the day and gave me some very flattering comments on my dancing.

Now it’s back to work and a shift in gears as I prepare to attempt to summit Mt. Rainier again in…not very long from now.

Well it was - my neighbors probably thought I had a girl over from the noises I was making, but no…the steak was just that good (I could pull the meat off the bone with my fork!) and the corn on the cob was absolutely delicious!

I’ve got another busy few weeks coming up.  I’ll be in Denver later this week, then I’ll be in Vegas at the end of the month for a stretch and then the ‘rents are coming to town!

I got a call from all my old friends back in Chicago that were having a little reunion of people from where we all first worked and met. It was great to hear them all and I wish could have been there. I definitely miss them all like crazy. I relaxed Friday night (oh wait, no I didn’t…hehe) and woke up early Friday morning for a hike down to Reflection Lake by Mt. Rainier. It was a beautiful day with the sun shining bright except for a brief moment when we passed through Tacoma and the sky turned grey…weird. It was a great hike, a total of 8.12 miles, which you can see below:

Upon returning to Seattle, we promptly cleaned up and went and got some spicy tots(!) at a local dive bar. We tried to wind down the night by watching a movie but I’m pretty sure we all passed out on the couch after ten(?) minutes. I can’t say for sure because I was toast after five, hehe.

Sunday was another great day, but I had to spend most of it reorganizing my computers in the basement. Unfortunately, one of them died during the move. Bummer. I also wandered around the Fremont Sunday Market for a good couple hours. It was such a nice day, I just didn’t want to go back to the basement…but it had to be done.

Finally, I ended my weekend with a soccer game. I played goalie tonight since our normal one couldn’t make it. I only let in two goals and our team tooke care of the rest scoring four to give us the win!

And now, a few things left to do (like shower!) before I crash and start a new week.

This is a picture from HousingMaps that combines Craigslist and Google Maps - that big blank area in the middle (between 99 and I-5) that shows no rentals…exactly where I want to live. The area around the lake is insanely popular and any good rentals usually gets snatched up in less than a day. I really would like to buy as there are a _ton_ of places for sale in the area…but I just don’t happen to have $500,000 lying around, which is what most of these places _start_ at…if you’re lucky. I’m hoping the lull in rentals is mostly due to people being away for Memorial Day weekend…but we’ll see.

I’ve been working on a fun research project for work that’s taken up most of my time when I’m not doing something else. More on that later.
I’m dancing, as usual, and working on a Rumba, (something secret), and a Viennese Waltz to perform this summer, just when the parents happen to be coming to visit me. On a side note, I was interviewed for a brief radio bit about Dancing with the Stars and Apollo - I have no idea when it aired, but it was pretty fun. And hopefully (!!) I should have my videos soon from my most recent competition!
And finally, I’m getting booted asked to move out of my current apartment. Yea…that one that I just had a housewarming for, barely two months ago. I’m really quite bummed - it was an amazing space that I have really come to love and feel at home in. Unfortunately, the landlords want to move back in and as such, I am left trying to find another place. No luck yet, but I’m optimistic something will come along. Regardless…it’s an great deal of stress that I really didn’t need right now…or at any point!  On a positive note, it does mean I get to have another housewarming. *grin*

Check out the pics and enjoy!

In other news, I slept in Sunday morning after the festivities but still managed to have a productive day.  It was beautiful so I decided to go for a little bike ride, which ended up to be me touring the three lakes in the area - Greenlake, Lake Union and Lake Washington.  I rode around Greenlake, passed by Lake Union and rode up the side of Lake Washington on the Burke-Gilman Trail.  All-told, I think it was about 20 miles of riding.  I was pretty tired at the end of it, but nothing that a Dick’s Deluxe and a vanilla shake couldn’t take care of.

Finally, I spent the remaining daylight hours cleaning up all the leaves in the flower beds of my back yard.  What a relaxing way to end the day - I filled a garbage can full of leaves!  But my flower beds look much better.  I also came across a few things in the flower bed that the previous owners’ daughter must have lost at one point:

What an awesome, amazing weekend.  Thanks again to all my friends - I am one lucky guy!