June 25 , 2008                                                                

Greetings,

Our trip to Mount Rainier is finished and it was a success!!   Here is a picture from our base camp at Camp Shurman.     At this point, it is another 5000 feet and two miles, as the crow flies, to the summit.

We climbed to Camp Shurman (9450 ft) the first day.   We rested on the second day and woke up at 11:00 pm to begin climbing around 12:30 am.   We had a full moon but unfortunately it was behind the mountain most of the time.  The winds were intense the day we climbed.   The forecast on the summit was 6 degrees and 46 mile per hour winds. We estimate that the gusts were between 60 and 70 mph.   At the peak, on the rim of the volcano, we literally were almost blown off the mountain.   We climbed down into the crater a ways to get some shelter from the wind and it is there that we took our "summit" pictures.

Unfortunately, we lost our second camera with all the photos on it so this website has half of what we wanted to post.   Thankfully we had two and we hope you enjoy these photos and videos.

The video of the helicopter was a special treat.   We were told that it resupplies the camp two days a year and it took place on our rest day at base camp.