Tag: rainier

How to (Almost) Not Climb Rainier

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  1. When your climbing partners tell you they have planned a trip to Rainier in 6 months, but imply you are not really invited, brush them off. Tell yourself you have no intentions of ever climbing said mountain, and that you’d rather be home eating ice cream and watching Disney movies.
  2. To celebrate the fact that your are currently not training for anything, reduce workouts to the bare minimum needed to stay in current size of clothing; increase chocolate consumption.
  3. Mentally prepare yourself for hearing about how great their trip was without you; or mentally picture how many ways their trip could go horribly wrong – and think about how glad you are that you were not invited.
  4. Completely forget trip is even happening.
  5. Find out one of the climbing partners bailed, and get invited to fill their space with T-2.5 weeks until the plane leaves.
  6. Go through the 4 stages of accepting you are going to have an adventure.
    1. Fear – I can’t do it! What if I die? What if I am the weak link? Why would I even want to go?
    2. Denial – I am definitely not going.
    3. Excitement – I am going!
    4. Preparation – I am going to need to train a lot. I am going to need to eat Ramon for 2.5 weeks to afford this. I am going to need to find a Goldfish sitter.
      Note: Stages do not always occur in order, and have been known to loop back to previous stages – especially regarding denial or fear. 
  7. Convince your significant other that this trip is a great idea! Even though you have shown utter contempt for this trip until you were invited.
  8. Realize you are definitely not in as good of shape as the others who have been training for 6 months.
  9. Scrape together money for plane ticket & Shot BLOKS. Prepare to quit job if boss refuses to approve time off request.
  10. Get on the plane, carry your 50lb duffel bag through Seattle, make friends with the climbing rangers, lug yourself up Rainier, watch your own hair stand straight up from electricity while getting soaked in a lightning storm on the descent, eat a gallon of wild blackberries, visit the original Starbucks, and reminisce about how you almost didn’t climb this amazing mountain.