Team Verve: Endurance Adventure Challenge 2009

The Map of our route to the top of Rainier and back to Paradise really says it all, but that was not the end for me. I continued on bicycle back home with a grand finale in Lake Washington.

The details of the trip:

Our adventure started with a paddle. Glenn Rodgers (Team DART)and I started at 7am from Alki Beach in Seattle. We set off on a cloudy, wetish morning. Along the way we saw salmon jumping constantly! You could almost walk from Vashon Island to the mainland on boats there were so many.

Our paddle lasted about 3 hours and covered 17 miles to Saltwater Park. Scott met us there and we picked up Matt Hayes who continued with us on bikes. We left Salt Water park at 11am.

Our ride to Paradise covered 94 miles and about 7000 feet of elevation gain. The day was cloudy and cool, but really a nice temperature for riding.

We arrived at 7:30pm ish, just as my niece was pulling into the parking lot with our gear. We changed over to our climbing gear, drank tons of coffee, ate lots of food and started hiking to Camp Muir.

Paradise was in a cloud all day, but once we were up about 400 feet, we got out of the cloud and it was beautiful! The conditions on the way to Muir were crazy! Solid ice from 8000 feet with crevasses everywhere. I have not ever seen the Muir snowfield in this condition.

We arrived at Camp Muir at 1:30am. We ate for a half hour, then slept for one hour. We were out of Camp at 3:45am.

We summitted at 9:15am – it was amazing!

The route was actually in really good shape, except for a couple of sketchy places. Matt Hayes did a fantastic job (it was his first glacier climb) and Glenn was really good too. Glenn was super positive the whole time and just kept us all going.

We stayed on top until about 10:30am, including about 20 minutes of napping.

Then we descended, arrived back at Camp Muir at 1:30pm, packed the rest of our stuff, and headed down. We arrived back at Paradise at 4pm. My niece was there to help us with gear again. Matt and Glenn got a ride home with JVG and Frenchy who had come up to ride home with us, but of course this didn’t happen because we were 4 hours behind our original schedule. They were out riding in the park when we got back. Matt found their car and left a note saying that we were in the lodge. I really wanted to ride home, so I got a room in the lodge by myself and rode home 119.7 miles today ending with a dunk in lake Washington.

It was a blast! Next year we will do another Endurance Challenge somewhere else.