Camp Muir
Topographical Map generated with my GPS and MapSource
Sometime during the past week, I changed my mind on what I wanted to do this weekend. My first inclination was an easy hike, which I ended up doing at Snow Lake. Around Wednesday, Nuria and I decided to go to Camp Muir. She thought the pictures from last week were so lovely and I do not like to be defeated by a mountain, so we planned to go. Dan would not go this time. After the hike, I realized why. Because of my problems last week, I bought some instep crampons, some gloves, a stove and pots, and oxygen. I decided if I needed to get air to keep from being sick, I would.
We started the hike just after 9:00 am. As I recalled from last week, the first 0.7 miles was really a killer. The first time I did this, I thought it got easier. It does not. You just get used to it about then. On the way to the snowfield, I read a sign that said the tundra was really fragile and one should not move rocks or it would destroy the tundra. The wording was completely silly. I laughed at the sign and picked up a small rock and moved it one inch. Nothing appeared to be destroyed by this. Perhaps I moved the only safe rock.
By the two-mile mark, we hit the snowfield and put the crampons on (Nuria had a much better pair than I did). I did not realize this until the way down, but the snowfield is the steepest part of the hike. We did the two miles to the snowfield in a little over an hour; the snowfield to the camp was appreciably longer. I was amazed at how much snow had melted since last weekend.
We stopped to take a break after five and a half hours and I told Nuria that at six and a half we would have to turn back because my dogs would explode if I was gone more that thirteen hours. She did not want to turn back. There was no way we could make it to Camp Muir from where we were in an hour. I said that if we picked up the pace, perhaps we could see it within that time and it would be something.
It was as though someone had given us a shot of adrenaline, our pace vastly improved. At this altitude, I found that I could take fifty steps, stop for twenty breaths, and take fifty more. This was working for me and we were making good progress. At the magic time of six and a half hours, we could see Camp Muir. Seeing it meant we were close and we decided to press on. My dogs have gone as long as fifteen hours when I made a mistake before, so it seemed still doable.
From the time we saw Camp Muir until we got there, took another hour. For a while, I was convinced that it was moving away from me. Nuria was getting really tired. I started doing one hundred steps and stopping and we made it. I was so glad. Nuria was about 100 steps behind me at this point. I sat on a rock and took my crampons off. Nuria arrived. The first thing she said was something that she now understood why Olympic athletes sometimes cry due to exhaustion. She was at that point. She looked it too. When we climbed the mound to get to the camp proper, she lay down and closed her eyes. I began to get concerned. There was no way this was going to be a quick stop. The important thing to remember is we made it to Camp Muir.
I began exploring the area as I ate a Power Bar. Camp Muir, if you could drive to it, would be an eye sore. At 10,100 feet or so, it is beautiful. There is some interesting scenery from Camp Muir
After about thirty minutes at the camp, I looked at the time. I had been using stopwatch mode on my watch only at that point. It was 5:30. Sundown is at 7:30. We had a serious problem. It was three or four hours to get off the mountain. Nuria was looking better especially after she ate. We decided to leave as soon as possible. I had her take my picture at the Camp so I could prove I was here. I would have taken her picture, but I did not want her to expend any more energy because we had a pretty big hike in front of us.
We began the trek of the Mountain at 6:00. I figured if we could get off the snowfield in 90 minutes, we might make it back to the car with some light in the sky. We made a good pace down. The crampons really helped. It was a race to the bottom, us against the sun. Two things of interest on the way down: First, we came across a rescue team making a camp for a guy who was two tired to get down. Second, there was this amazing view to the East that had the shadow of the mountain in it. We did not make it off the snowfield by 7:30, but we did make it by 7:45. Pretty close. Short stop to take the crampons off and my headlamp out of my pack. Interesting note, I have a lot of safety equipment in my pack that I often just consider extra weight with no importance. The headlamp is one of those things. It really hit home yesterday that the unexpected happens and you need to be ready for it. Thanks for Cody and Jeff from work, I was.
The next goal was to get past the rock steps made in the path before we lost the ambient light. Still making a good pace, we trekked on and made it past all the steps I was concerned with before we lost the light. I turned on my headlamp. Two other people coming off the mountain caught up to us and walked with us for a while because of the light. It turned out that there were more steps than I remember and we had a slow pace getting back to the 0.7 mile mark where the trail is covered in asphalt. Once there, one of the two new guys we picked up stopped to look at the stars for a while. If I did not want to get off the mountain so bad, I probably would have joined him; it was a spectacular sight that I had not seen before. Sure I had seen the stars but I never remember seeing them with so far from city lights. I am certain this was the first time I ever saw the Milky Way.
The other guy we picked up left us shortly later when he heard his girlfriend call him from the parking lot. He started walking far more quickly. Once we saw the lights from the Lodge below, we picked up the pace too. We made it down in three hours and seventeen minutes. Nuria called her husband from the pay phone and I looked at the stars. 12:17 minutes total. Next summer when I do this again, I will do it in less than nine hours.
End Note: The dogs had to go just over 18 hours without going outside. They made it, but I will never ever do that to them again. Next time I climb to Camp Muir, they are going to a Kennel just to play it safe.
