Pt 4:
We set off across Cowlitz Glacier in the blanket of night.
We were two tiny specks trekking an inhospitable landscape of gaping glacial slices, cracks all around cutting hundreds of feet deep into ice.
Over narrow snow paths, under ice walls. We had no idea want we were facing around each corner. It wasn’t till the face of Disappointment Cleaver that I nearly crapped myself in fear. Nothing would stop me from falling thousands of feet off the edge other than my own placement of ax and crampon against slick ice in the darkness. I looked over the cliff with vertigo. The world spun in thin air. My grey breath all about me, slow and rhythmic in the still night. The only sound: the crunch beneath my feet, the chip of my ax into ice, and the beating of my heart.
Forward. Upwards, past the cliff, in the narrow boulder field and along side Emmons Glacier.
The size of these features are impossible to illustrate. Shit, they’re hard enough to comprehend when looking at them in real life. Transfixed by her majestic surface I traveled across a foreign planet. Adrenaline levels rushing, we moved through the night.
Six hours later of constant upward travel and traversing narrow slopes and cliff lines the sun began to peak around the horizon. We were a few hundred feet from the summit.
At day break we reached the outer rim of her volcanic cauldron.
One neat feature of Mount Rainier, her top still steams. Elements of ice and heat meeting in a hostile environment of battling elements of glacier and lava.
The ground warm and cold, creating tunnels in ice that lead inside her belly. If I had more time and more rope, I would have loved to explore deeper inside the labyrinth of her summit. It is an amazing place of harsh conditions and exposure. I read once a plane crashed on top of Rainier inside the crater and sunk still buried there today.
The only thing left to do: the long descent back to civilization.
Log Book:
One last look.
One last goodbye,
From out the airplane window.
Before she disappeared,
behind a blanket of cloud,
And the turn of wing.
Like a lover,
leaving for the last time.
Unable to look back.
Thanks for reading.
Follow up on the other chapters:
Mount Rainier pt1:
https://steemit.com/adventure/@ghostfish/mount-rainier-14-410
Mount Rainier pt2:
https://steemit.com/adventure/@ghostfish/mount-rainier-pt2-i-ve-been-waiting
Mount Rainier pt3:
https://steemit.com/adventure/@ghostfish/y8srqesk