This morning we had an excellent last breakfast in Seattle at Portage Bay. We shared a chorizo sausage scramble and challah French toast. Oh boy, was that delicious! Then we packed up and left the Ballard Inn which has been home sweet home the last 5 days. On the way out of town we had to stop at REI. How could we not stop at one of the two flagship stores?! It was amazing! If we lived here, we'd probably just turn over our paycheck to them.
We arrived at 12:45 and checked in at Whittaker Bunkhouse. Luckily our room was already ready so we moved all our gear inside. The room is cozy with two twin beds. We laid out our gear, then we went over to the rental shop to get what I knew I needed: boots, harness, crampons. I ended up with the plastic style boots rather than leather but I can change that after mountain school if they don't work.
Then we loaded everything into our packs to get ready for gear check at 3pm. We received our Rainier passes! Then our guides Lindsay Mann and Tyler Jones came over to introduce themselves and welcome us to Rainier Basecamp! They spent the next hour doing quick introduction of the 18 members of our team and then briefly describing the climb. The mountaineering lesson for today was "in the mountains we are never in a rush but we are always moving."
We have people from all over including France and ages from ~20ish to ~60ish. There are 4 gals including me. Then we split into two groups of 9. Mitch and I are with Tyler. We unloaded all our gear onto the grass. Tyler spent the next two hours explaining each piece of gear and then we all walked around to each person's bag. Tyler suggested that I needed shell pants, shell jacket and mittens, so back to the rental shop we went at 6pm. Then we had dinner at the restaurant here. It's like a little town. There is the RMI building where the administrative office is located, a gear shop, gear rental, restaurant/bar with pizza and burgers, the bunkhouse and cafe. It's cute!
We had dinner with a member of Lindsay's team. Really enjoyed getting to know about each other and speculating about the days ahead. Then Mitch and I went back to the room to get our packs ready for mountain school tomorrow. We have separate checklists for tomorrow and Thur/Fri. We meet tomorrow at 8:15am and we'll be done about 5pm. Should be able to see Rainier for the first time up close! Today we couldn't see it because of the rain.
The weather is looking iffy. The guides encouraged us to not worry about the forecast just yet. Anything can happen. But it looks like we'll be getting a bunch of snow Thursday night. No teams have summited the last 8 days due to icy conditions and poor visibility. We'll see!
We are so excited to be here and we're eager to get this show on the road! G'night!
