There I Was... The Mowich Face on Mt. Rainier

There I was, July 7th of this year, in that blissful place where comfort, safety and a sense of accomplishment all stew together after a challenge in the mountains has been bested. Only there was this one little nagging feeling. Why didn't we summit? We had the weather, we had the time, we even had the energy, but we had stopped at good enough. We would spend the rest of the trip looking back at the upper flanks of Rainier and kicking ourselves for the 10% of the project we didn't accomplish. Brian Fletcher had called me the previous week with a plan. We'd head up to the westside of Mt. Rainier on the day the Mowich Lake road opened, and we'd poke around. Neither of us had been on the Mowich side of Rainier, so we wanted to visit, as an exploratory mission. Mountaineers being as they are, though, we both started doing the research and compiling the gear so that we'd have everything we needed 'just in case' we wanted to try to ski something big once we got there.

The 'just in case' inevitably turned into, 'why don't we' and we found ourselves waking at 2am on the second day to cross the Mowich glacier from our camp on Ptarmigan Ridge. By 8 we were at the base of the Edmunds headwall on the Mowich face. The weather was looking somewhat promising despite the hammering winds that were keeping our enthusiasm at bay. We hunkered down in a wind hollow below some cliffs and burned a little time waiting for the weather to give us a strong sign one way or the other.

The Edmunds Headwall is a very straightforward ski, but it's HUGE and the entire upper half is a no fall zone as it terminates in massive cliffs and icefalls. A no-brainer in corn, but a chattery dance with death if it's ice. Wind, or lack thereof would dictate the viability of the mission.

Toward 9:30 the wind showed some signs of lightening up, and we decided to push on across the bergshrund and get a feel for conditions on the actual face. The thing about the Mowich face, though, is that you don't just go dabble. Once you're on it, you're on it. It's sustained steep open airy climbing for nearly 4000ft. Conditions were quite good for climbing and we were able to move fairly efficiently up the face on front points and ice tools. Every so often a rock or chunk of ice would hurtle down the face with the speed of a rocket powered cheetah, serving to keep us awake and alert.

Don't think about the rocks, don't think about the cliffs below. Just keep climbing. Foot, hand, foot, hand, repeat. I love skiing big features, but I am seldom comfortable climbing them. It gives me the willies.

Eventually the magic of putting one foot in front of the other resulted in our reaching the ridgeline at the top of the headwall. Sunset Ridge to be exact. Relieved to get the weight off of the crampons and axes and to be above the rock and icefall hazards, we dug in and had a charming lunch enjoying the warm temperatures and total lack of wind. And then we got soft.

The voices that say things like "It's a long lateral move to the summit" and "we're already on top of our ski objective" and "the snow might get too soft to ski by the time we get back from the summit" started getting loud and sounding pretty convincing. And we listened to them. We listened to the voices, and we pulled off our crampons. We put the axes on the packs. We put the boots in ski mode. And instead of heading up to finish the mission in the best style possible, we pointed the skis downhill and started cautiously making turns down the upper Edmunds Headwall.

But perhaps I'm focusing a bit too much on the negative, there is a flipside. I need not forget about the 4000 feet of sustained 40-50 degree skiing on one of the continent's great mountains followed by another couple thousand feet of casual glacier cruising terminating in a glorious flat nap-rock at the glacier's base complete with a fresh glacial spring kicking out thousands of gallons of water directly from god's faucet. Yum.

And then there was the next day. Complete solitude and perfect weather with nothing to do but lounge in the sun, take dips in a remarkably warm glacial tarn, and study the many faces of the westside of Mt. Rainier. The grumpy overachiever in me likes to focus on the fact that we turned away before earning the summit. But there is a side of me that I prefer to associate with. That side of me is thankful for the time outside. Thankful for the health to be able to travel in those places, for the friends with whom to enjoy it, and thankful that nature has provided endless opportunities to explore and find peace in the outdoors. And to top it all off, now I've got one more reason to go back. Another mission begins...

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