Dear Matt, Bonnie & Rachel:

Thanks for your efforts to help reduce air pollution and emphysema by
joining the American Lung Association benefit climb of Mt. Rainier. My
own father 87 and is suffering from it after many years of smoking.
Although he stopped fifteen years ago the damage was done and he suffers
the same problems Matt's grandfather "Pops" did.

I climbed Mt. Rainier with a coulple of friends on August 1, 1969, when
I was 16 years old. It was a guided trip we joined after working for a
month in the park building a shelter cabin at Nickel Creek. We took the
Ingraham Route, leaving from Paradise and staying the night at Camp
Muir. We were awakened by our guides at mignight to discover a full moon
lighting the mountain. The long trek through the night felt like a sort
of hypnosis or meditation, with the rest-stepping and boredom of slow
but constant climbing. You are correct about the breathing: I did take
two breaths for every step, particularly at the steeper section far up
the mountain.  (Led Zepplin's Dazed and Confused was running through my
head on a loop during this time.) In my memory I can still see the
sparks from my crampons scrambling on the lava of Disappointment
Cleaver. During a rest stop along the edge of a crevasse a piece of the
lip broke away just after we left the spot, and the idea that we could
have been dropped into that icy blue maw was frightening. Then we had to
cross it on a snow bridge! The sharp wind just at first light made me
coldest I've even been, before or since, but the sunrise was incredible,
starting with the faintest band of deep blue, changing to close, sharp
lines of red and yellow, just like the pictures of sunrise taken from
earth orbit. (Hell, we were so high we were practically in orbit!) I was
glad that I took all my cold weather gear and put all of it on. The sun
cups were awful on the final push over 13,000 feet. The sublimation of
the snow at high altitude creates fields of deep cups about 18" across
separated by sharp points, and you have to step over and through them.
All this when you can barely pick one foot up over the other! When we
reached the summit it may have been the most tired I've even been. I
could barely enjoy the view.

I was chosen to lead the descent and looking down the side of that
immense mountain in the daylight was terrifying. Coming off the summit
the curve of the slope falling away makes it possible only to see what
is right in front of you with the backround mountain ranges over 10,000
feet below, and the exposure is dizzying. We made it down though, and
the glissading down the lower snowfields was outrageous fun. We were in
shirtsleeves and Zinc oxide after 9 A.M. because the sun was so bright.
I broke through the crust of a snowfield at one point below Camp Muir
and almost fell ten feet into a raging stream under the ice. I had
enough forward momentum that I made it across the hole and rolled, but a
fall into a subterranean stream could have been a big problem! When we
got back to base a woman at the Visitor Center in Paradise asked us if
we went all the way to the top, and I said, "the top of what, lady?"

We hitchhiked to Seattle and talked the host at the Olympic Hotel into
letting us stay the night in a storage room, where I slept in the
bathtub because there were not enough beds. The next day I got on a bus
to go back to New York, then decided not to go to the Woodstock
Music and Arts Festival the day I got home because I was freaked out
about being with so many people. It was an extraordinary year!

I managed to squeeze off a few Kodachromes with an old five pound Argus
E-3 while I was on the mountain and sometime if you are over this way I
might be able to dig them out.

As you can tell from this note it was a memory that has not faded over
all those intervening years. I'm sure you will remember your climb, too.
Good luck!

Seb