Mount Rainier

On Saturday August 4th as a part of the DiMM course we headed up to Mt. Rainier. This would be my first opportunity to try out my mountaineers boots and ice ax! I'd watched several youtube videos about how to self arrest with the ice axe - so it was time to give it a try.

The hike up was absolutely beautiful. A lot of wildflowers were in bloom. Our group hiked up together and found an area off the beaten track to practice self arresting with ice axes and glissading (basically sledding on your butt, using an ice ax as a rudder). The elevation where we did this was about 6,000ft - and we could feel it - as we'd just come from sea level that morning.

 I somehow managed to lose my nalgene bottle on the way up the glacier. I think it slipped out of my pack - I assumed someone would have found it - but no such luck. Being somewhat stubborn and not willing to admit I was unprepared I tried to made do without any water - eventually I broke down and borrowed a sip or two. Eventually I borrowed an empty bottle and filled it with snow and iodine. The snow didn't really melt - so it became a sort of iodine slushy... not so yummy.

After practicing glacier skills several of us decided to continue up to Camp Muir, the furthest point up you can go without a climbing permit. 3 of the guys in my group has actually secured a permit and planned to camp at Muir and attempt to summit the next morning.  Camp Muir is 10,080 ft. Being a "medical trip" we had a portable pulse oximeter with us. My pulse ox was around 99% in the parking lot prior to the hike, at 6000 ft it was still 96-98%. However by the time I made it up to Camp Muir it was 85% and my heart rate was 140. Now I know how some of my patients feels. Luckily after a couple of minutes my heart rate dropped back down in the 80s and my pulse ox rose to about 90%.

On the way back down my strategy of just not really drinking anything began to fail. Ben (one of my classmates) and I were both out of water. We weighed the pros and cons - and ended up drinking out of a little glacier stream. So far almost 2 weeks later I'm still not regretting it :)

 Despite a wrong turn and a bit of extra hiking we made it back to the car before dark :)
On the drive out a car went into a pretty substantial ditch. After brief discussion of the irony (I was riding with two other EM docs) we stopped  and ensure the driver was ok - and ended up giving him a ride down to the ranger station to get some towing help. Never a dull day!

I'd definitely recommend Rainer to anyone in the area!