Rainier Attempt via DC

Rainier Attempt via DC to 12,800ft

Sunrise climbing onto Disappointment Cleaver

Sept 7-8, 2023

This year the routes on Rainier have melted out unusually early. In mid August a heat wave took out many snow bridges across crevasses, and soon afterwards the guide companies stopped guiding for the season. Usually this wouldn’t happen until mid September.

I had just gotten back from mountaineering in central Asia and wanted to take advantage of my acclimation and tag Rainier. My friend Josh had climbed the standard Disappointment Cleaver route the day after the guides had pulled the ladders, and he said there were thin snow bridges across the crux crevasses. That route seemed like the only feasible route to the summit in the current conditions, so Nick and I decided to give it a shot using Josh’s GPS track.

The route

Thursday morning we picked up a permit at Paradise and hiked up to Camp Muir. Amazingly, we were able to stay almost completely on rock in trail runners following the ridge up the east side over Anvil Rock and Muir Peak. We only walked on the glacier ice for about 5 minutes after Anvil Rock.

There was one guided group practicing glacier travel skills at camp muir, but they stayed in the guide huts. The regular shelter was empty, which is kind of rare. We got to bed early with nice undercast views.

Friday we were moving by 4:30am. We wanted to time it so we could see the route starting near the cleaver, since we’d read navigation could start getting tricky there. The route was very icy with many crevasses exposed. We crossed over Cathedral Gap, then followed hints of the old boot track through Ingraham Flats, then up through a crevasse maze, around the top of high crack, and over to the cleaver.

Climbing on the upper route

We carefully climbed over a thin snow fin to cross the moat, then scrambled up exposed choss to gain the trail. From there it was an easy hike to the top. We then crossed onto the glacier and headed up. The old boot track was sort of visible, but the snow was very melted out to penitentes, which made progress interesting. We approximately followed the old boot track and Josh’s GPS track. When we reached 12,800ft we encountered a huge crevasse. It extended as far as we could see down to our left and right. The narrowest gap was about 6ft with overhangs on the sides. It looked maybe possible to jump, but pretty risky. Josh’s track went directly over this one, so it appeared the snow bridge from mid august had melted out.

Hiking out (photo by Nick)

We moved down and right looking for a way across, but couldn’t find any. Above it was the 12,900ft mega crevasse we’d been warned about by the rangers and we thought would be the crux. It appeared any previous snow bridges across that one had melted out also. Snow conditions were very icy and didn’t inspire confidence trying to traverse way right to the Emmons to try to find a way around. The traverse looked steep and exposed below. The crevasse went as far around the mountain as we could see.

So we reluctantly bailed. We hiked back down the cleaver, then rapped off a horn back onto the snow fin. We retraced our steps to camp muir, then hiked back down to Paradise, tagging a few named bumps along the way like Sugarloaf and McClure Rock.

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