We woke at midnight and left at 2:00am to start our climb; preparations took some time because we had to completely pack up camp as well as get some warm food into us. We crossed the gully and started up the chute in the tongue of the Kautz. The nieves penitentes (aka sun cups) were extreme: often measuring 5 feet from the bottom of the cup to the tip of the penitente. There was a full moon making the penitentes seem to glow, giving the whole scene a surreal bluish appearance. Years later, seeing the Taj Mahal by moonlight would remind me of this climb.

We proceeded through some very steep sections of the sun cups with the confidence that if someone were to fall, the rope would be caught on the penitentes and stop the fall quickly. The going was similar to class 4 on rock as we climbed from one sun cup to the next. As the slope eased, we continued on until I noticed that the bottom of the sun cup in front of me was missing. The snow had melted what would otherwise be a snow bridge just enough to expose a crevasse, leaving a lattice of bottomless suncups as the “bridge!” I started to turn to my right when I noticed the sun cup there had no bottom; the same was true if I tried to go left. I yelled to everyone to stop and back up slowly. After that, we proceeded with great caution, testing the bottoms of sun cups before venturing into them. The sun cups disguised the crevasses so we often could not see them until we were literally on top of them.

Unfortunately, climbs of Rainier start well before sunrise, making it difficult or impossible to get pictures of the most challenging parts of the climb. Waiting for sunrise can make the climb more difficult and/or dangerous, as the sun makes the snow slushy, snow bridges less strong, frozen rocks break loose and ice cliffs calve. In this picture Kathy appears unhappy that I am going downhill, a necessary maneuver to get around a crevasse. The going is not as steep and the suncups are not as deep as what we had negotiated in the dark.

It took us 3½ hours to gain the first 1,000 feet through the technical difficulties coming out of high camp. Above that, the sun cups were less severe and the going got easier. We encountered one final huge crevasse that took a very long traverse to circumvent. The challenge as we approached the summit was 70mph winds that blew pumice dust into our eyes and sometimes made balance tenuous.