Sunday after church, two friends and I left to climb up Mt Rainier. The weather was amazing and I had a four day weekend so I was looking forward to getting out of town. Right after we unloaded our bags at the parking lot we realized that we only had a small bottle of sunscreen between the three of us. This was ironic since we were over prepared with all the rest of our gear! Thankfully none of us got too burnt. Packing in our gear to stay overnight plus my skis, my pack was pretty heavy and I quickly realized I am not in very good shape for alpine climbing.
There is nothing like a long hike to allow questions to fester in your mind over and over: Why don't I do this more often? Am I really this out of shape? How much further are we going? Why didn't I train more? Working out can be pretty simple and yet there are many profound parallels in life to applying a host of skills and a lot of energy to a given task. Being in grad school now, my thoughts quickly latch onto teaching and I recognize my own need to prepare and exercise in many ways. Like my students, living life outside of a class reminds me of the value of an education.
We had left late, so with the sun slipping away we decided to camp out on the snowfield below Camp Muir. We were pretty cosy and slept well for the most part. While having coffee and breakfast the next morning, we identified some different mountain ranges and contemplated future hikes. After hiking further to up to Muir we went skiing down the mountain, basically a long blue run. The snow conditions were excellent. Before packing up and heading home we shared a growler (Boundary Bay IPA) in the parking lot. It seems I was spoiled on my first time climbing Rainier!
Very nice!
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