“90% of climbing mountains is looking good” –Jonathan Schrock

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Today turned out to be the hardest day of the trip. After getting up at 6 AM again, we packed up camp & headed out to tackle the Muir Snowfield – a vast expanse of snow known for having the highest number of fatalities of any area of the mountain due to the frequent storm & whiteout conditions that develop there. As such we sought to get up it as fast as possible.

After about 30 minutes of climbing, we dug a hole in the snow & buried the sleds – Camp Muir at 10,000 feet has a stone shelter that we’ll be staying in so we don’t need the supplies. We will dig out the sleds on the way down – less weight to carry up the mountain is always a good thing! The going was tough due to the ~2 feet of fresh powder. Even with snowshoes, the leaders of the group would sink about 10 inches into the snow. The going gets easier for every subsequent person, as they walk in & further compact the steps made by the person in front. Making sure to walk in those exact same steps can become tiring however, as we found out. The guides led the team up front, but it was still a good push to get up the snowfield. We got to practice our rest-step techniques, and Chris taught us a breathing technique called Pressure Breathing that helped out immensely.

The view, or rather the gorgeous environment of white snow touching white cloud made the difficulty more than bearable. We also got some sun on the way up, which actually made things a bit too hot. There’s no such thing as comfortable on a mountain. You’re either too hot or too cold, as conditions are dynamic and your exertion level varies continuously. A few minutes from Camp Muir, a sudden snowstorm hit us so we got in with almost perfect timing. It took us about 6 hours to make Camp Muir from Camp 2.

Once inside the shelter, we laid out our stuff on the top “bunks”. We say bunk but they were really just plywood panels set up in bunk-bed formation. No soft mattresses here! In fact I felt like this was the coldest camp, despite being protected by 3 feet of stone.

After the long day, we were thankful that the only other item on the agenda was listening to Chris talk about & demonstrate knots inside the IMG hut. The hut was pleasantly more comfortable than the cook tent, and we all had a great time talking into the night. We got to hear some pretty insane travel stories, ranging from one story about almost dying at the hands of terrorists in the Middle East(saved by an Imam priest), to bailing out a sinking ship in the middle of a night in open water, to weathering 21 hours stuck in one position between rocks in the Himalayas due to extreme storm conditions! I feel like I don’t hold a candle to these Adventurers!

Continue to Day 5