Since I moved back to BC Mathew asked me if I want to join him for his Mount Ranier trip on Canada Day long weekend since he had 2 extra booked spots and of course I said yes and invited Marius to join us.
Almost the entire week it was pretty stormy up there and there was not too much info about the routes and the weather was still a bit iffy for Saturday but we had 3 days booked there so still went for it and were hoping for the best.
We left Vancouver pretty early since we had to meet Mathew and his 2 friends at the Visitor Center of Mount Rainier.
We got there on time and soon we met Mathew and his friends and went to get our permits.
It was crazy how many people were at the parking lot, lots of climbing parties and lots of people that were just doing day hikes.
The weather was not that great once we left parking lot and the summit was in some thick clouds.
I tough I saw a lot of people at the parking lot but once we got higher on the route i was pretty shocked,it was almost like a snake of people making their way up.
We were going pretty slow since we only had to get to Camp Muir and we had all day to do that, so we took our time.
On the way up there was a pretty fat and pretty friendly Marmot that I bet is pretty used to people by that time and higher up we met a friendly Ptarmigan.
Even that the summit was in thick clouds those icefalls looked crazy, and there was few parties that were going to other routes that looked pretty insane.
After 5 hours we reached Camp Muir where we found a spot and started to set up our tents.
We still had lots of time left in the day and decided to walk around and ask around to see if anyone went up the summit or if anyone has any updates on the weather.
We talked with the guides from the hut for a bit and they said that nobody was on the mountain for the last 5 days and they are planning to go up tomorrow but they will check the snow condition first and we decided to just wake up an hour later than the guiding groups and see how far they will go.
After our dinners we soon went to bed with a hope for the next day.
The next morning we woke up and most of the people were on their way up to the summit and soon we started to get our gear on, get roped up in 2 groups and started our way up the summit.
It didn't took us to much before we reached the higher camping area, The Flats, where there was few tents and people were getting ready to leave soon too.
As we were making towards Disappointment Cleaver we could all those guiding groups that weren't too far from us that left an hours before us.
We got to the other groups pretty fast and I got into traffic on Disappointment Cleaver.
Once we traversed the nasty part of it and started to go up we started to pass groups.
It was getting brighter and the views were pretty incredible.
Along the route there was few pretty opened crevasses and some steep areas with fixed ropes.
At the High Break area there was few more guiding groups that were taking their break and we decided to stop too and take our break but tried to leave before them.
Soon we got on the sub summit and we could finally see the summit which was pretty close to us.
Everybody was happy and excited and didn't took us too much to get up on the summit of Mount Rainier.
We took a lot of photos and took our time enjoying the beautiful views that we were having from the summit of Mount Rainier.
Soon we started our way back down and the route down wasn't as busy since all the guiding groups were still on the summit and there wasn't any traffic on the route.
Once we got back to Camp Muir we got some snacks, packed our gear and slowly started our way back down to the car.
And again we got tired of saying Hi to endless line of people going up.
Mathew and his friends had a cabin near by and they decided to stay there for another night and head back home on Monday and me and Marius drove back home on Sunday.
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