Camp Muir Hike

For those of you that don't know I live in Washington state only about three hours from Mt. Rainier which is often summited between May and November though starting in July is when the crevices start to open up and I wouldn't recommend climbing without a guide at that point. When climbing the mountain you start out at Paradise (5,400ft) and head north to Panorama point (6,700ft) in which case is a rather steep hill. From there you hit a fork and turn left and continue a 2.5 mile trek up Camp Muir (10,100ft). Overall you are traveling 5 miles and gaining almost 4,700ft.

During the summer when the snow has melted more the trek to Panorama point is often a wonderful hike for families and though there is a steep point the trail is nice and you can take breaks often. I did not hike this in the summer... I hiked it on May 5th 2013 which is still spring and as such there was a lot of snow. A fit person in the snow generally makes the entire climb up between 6 and 8 hours.

My friends and I started our trek at 9:30am with snow shoes on. It was easy going and though we had frequent breaks we still arrived at Panorama point by 11:30am with plenty of time to make it Camp Muir before the sun went down. From this point it was a lot steeper than what I had been expecting and though I was only carrying a 20 pound backpack it started to feel like 50 by the time we had reached the Muir snowfield.

It was a slow and steady trek up the mountain which I had hit my breaking point and because I am stubborn I continued to go forward. I'm paying for it now with extreme leg pain and as such I wanted to address some lessons learned with all of you, my readers.

Lessons Learned:

1. Apply sunscreen often to your entire face. When I say entire I mean INSIDE your nose as well. I got sunburned inside my nostrils which is extremely uncomfortable.
2. Make sure you have chap stick with SPF50 in it and apply every 60-90 minutes. It was thanks to mine were not burned... though the rest of my face is.
3. No matter how small you believe the workout is the day prior (such as Zumba) don't do it. Allow your body to rest and recover from your weekly workout a couple of days before a climb like this.
4. When you hit the point to turn around... do so. Don't push yourself and be discouraged. The fact is that the further you push yourself the more you are going to hurt and the more downtime you will have to take to recover. You may not have made it this time but that doesn't mean you will never make it.
5. If you are a woman... buy one of those funnels that you pee in so that you don't have to squat in the snow with snowshoes on. I held it all the way up to Camp Muir (8-10 hours). Which meant that I was seriously

In the end I made a lot of novice mistakes and am in extreme pain because of it now. Though it was a beautiful hike I didn't have the energy to make it down and most of the time I had to have my friends help me otherwise the sun would have faded. We were back down at the car at 8:45pm... as the last light was fading from the sky.

One thing is for certain though... I will be going back up to Camp Muir before I go climb in Africa cause if I can't make it up to 10,000ft without struggling how the heck am I going to make it almost 20,000?