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David was somewhere on the Muir snow field when I took this picture. He took some gear up and dropped it off at camp, then hiked back down and met me at the motel.
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The next day, we headed for Muir (again for David).
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The weather was perfect, but the forecast called for a system coming in late the next day, so we decided to hike to Muir, and go for the summit the same night.
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I was a little worried that David’s hike the previous day would burn him out, but at camp, David was feeling better than he did the day before.
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We cooked some lunch and climbed into the tent for some shut-eye, waking up to the alarm at 11:00pm. Not sure David slept all that much, but I was out like a light. We geared up, roped up and head out across Cowlitz glacier ahead of most everybody else.
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We made our way through Cathedral Gap, up to Ingraham Flats, over a well placed ladder on Ingraham glacier and up the nose of Disappointment Cleaver before the sun peaked over the edge of the Earth.
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The Route was very straight forward and in very good shape.
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There were a few snow bridges, but they were all very solid.
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We played leap frog with this large group of climbers for most of the way up the dome. A very friendly group from back east.
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The only real issue we had to deal with was a pair of crampons that didn’t want to stay on David’s boots. They were adjusted a little on the large side and we didn’t have the tool to adjust them. After about five tries, we finally found a strapping method that kept them on.
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The summit was cold and windy, but that is to be expected at 14.4. We hung out for a while, signed the registry and headed back towards thicker air.
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Things were softening up so I was glad we had started as early as we did, but there were still teams heading up (far too late in my estimation).
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That’s Ingraham Flats below.
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The two climbers in the upper right of this photo are about to cross the ladder. Crossing the ladder in the daylight caused a little more hesitation for David than he had on the way up. That was a pretty deep crevasse.
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Heading down Disappointment Cleaver… no disappointment today!
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Nearly back to Camp Muir. The worst part about this part, is the idea that you still have 5k feet to descend, and have to do it with all of your gear on your back.
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David found some girls who wanted a picture of their back sides.
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All in all, this trip couldn’t have been much better! I love that mountain and climbing it with my old friend David Bayes was an honor and a lot of fun!
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This was the first time I was able to track the climb from start to finish.