Rainier Via Kautz Route

July 6th-7th
Being unemployed with no obligations does have its benefits and being mobile is one of them. On July 4th I was celebrating my independence by packing up my life into my little Mazda and headed for the Cascades. 12 hours later I arrived at "The Farm", a house for the guides who work for RMI. While here, I met up with Mikey, a guide who I worked with when I was up in Alaska.
He played host for me as we drank other peoples beer and shot off the potato gun.
The next day, we were on the fence of what route to do on Rainier. He let me decide, and between Liberty Ridge and Kautz, I chose Kautz. Liberty had to many objective hazards for my liking and felt that it was to late in the season for the committing line.
One of Mikes friends, Erik, came along with us.
We had a bit of a late start (10am) for the first days hike up to high camp. The weather was looking grim, but we knew we would hike out of the cloud level.



We broke out of the cloud level around 8.5k and set up camp around 11k. It only took 6 hours to go from the parking lot to high camp! We were moving fast, or so I thought. I was pretty happy with that. Here's a pic of me and a pic of our high camp area.



The wind was incredible that night. I might have received a combine 30 minutes of sleep before the wake up call for the alpine start. We left by 2am. This was imperative because we retreat down the same way we go up and there is a tight section where rock and ice fall were a major concern for mid day hours.
A view of the route from high camp & a pic of Mikey ice climbing around 2am! Whoohoo.




The top is within eye site, still 2k away & views all around:





Camera died at the summit (I do have video of it), but here are some pics on the return down. Rappelling a few hundred feet with a 50 meter rope was mentally draining. Rap 20 meters, drill a V-thread, rap 20, drill a v-thread. etc..







Once we hit our high camp, we took a 2 hour nap, and then proceeded to glissade down most of the mountain.

Rainier was such sweet mtn. to climb that I'd like to head back earlier in the season next year to get on Liberty Ridge.

Short video edit of some of the views we saw:

Rainier quick edit from Kyle Walcott on Vimeo.

All the pics I took:
http://picasaweb.google.com/Kyle.Walcott84/MtRainier#