Mountaineering

Rock climbing and Ice climbing are just sub classes of the much bigger and better sport known as mountaineering. Most people take part in rock-climbing and ice climbing to prepare for Mountaineering. Its much like training in a gym but instead of weights, you are just climbing and honing your skills. This is one reason that I like to climb. I would love to one day climb a mountain like Rainier or Everest. However I would like to climb it without any Sherpa’s. Which are the people that would usually carry all of your gear while you climb up the mountain. To me that is just cheating, and you’re not challenging yourself.

While mountaineering can involve the use of snowshoes, icepicks, and crampons.  There are many parts of mountaineering where you are more or less hiking. For example in the summer months Mt. Rainier located in Washington is 60% hiking and 40% glacier climbing. Many expeditions take place at night when the glaciers are more stable. People risk there life’s climbing and all precautions are taken in order to ensure everyone makes it back safe.  They only problem is Mother Nature, and the mountain are unpredictable. It could be a blue bird day one minute and the next you can’t see two feet in front of you. My other dream would be to go big mountain snowboarding. I think it would be the coolest thing to climb a mountain and then snowboard down. It would be so rewarding after taking days to climb to the top of a beautiful mountain. Being rewarded by breath taking views that not many people get to see would be like the cherry on top of a delicious sundae. Even better having the chance to go down the mountain in style would just make everything so worth it.

Having two very close childhood friends that think the same way, and want to climb Mt.Rainier also. Makes it super easy to motivate myself because we can help each other through the hard parts. All the rock climbing and Ice climbing we do is just training for Rainier.  I believe that it is good to have a big goal to reach for. It feels good when something seems out of reach yet with hard work and practice your goal can be obtainable. Nothing is better then sitting around a campfire with your climbing buddies at the end of a long climb talking about that wicked face you just climbed. For me Climbing isn’t an individual sport, it’s a team effort. I look forward to future adventures with my climbing buddies and hopefully one day we will see the world from the top of Mt. Rainier.