For Tri-City Herald reporter, Mount Adams climb brings challenge, reward

The summit was so close.

I’m not great at judging distance, but I’d say it was maybe 30 or 40 feet away.

My friend Eddie Goss was already there, taking in the stunning view. My other friend, Courtney Flatt, was waiting for me, 10 or 15 feet ahead.

It might as well have been a mile. Or 100 miles. I was spent.

Eddie, Courtney and I started our journey up Mount Adams the afternoon before. We hiked 4 1/2 or five hours before making camp, starting out on a dirt trail and then moving to rocks and snow.

It was a fun day — relatively easy, save for a brutally cold stretch at the end, as darkness began to fall.

But after a freezing, sleepless night, and the punishing slog of Adams’ notorious false summit, I was out of steam.

The top was in sight, but my legs were rubbery. I was breathing as hard as I ever had. My fingers and toes were numb.

I fantasized about being at home, snuggled in an electric blanket, with a mug of hot chocolate in my hands.

Then I heard Courtney’s voice. “You’re almost there!” she said.

And I was. So I did the most important thing I learned on my mountain adventure: I put one foot in front of the other.

‘Opportunity to test yourself’

I have Courtney to thank for my trip up Adams.

A Texas native and accomplished outdoor athlete, she moved to the Tri-Cities about five years ago. Climbing the peak — Washington’s second-tallest, after Mount Rainier — quickly found a spot high on her Northwest bucket list.

We were supposed to give it a try last summer with a different group, but that trip didn’t pan out. The trek with Eddie came together over the last month or so.

Like Courtney, Eddie also is a Tri-City transplant. An avid outdoorsman, he was the most experienced mountaineer of our crew.

In early June, he reached the summit of Mount Hood, a more technical climb that required roping up.

For Courtney and me, Adams was our first climb, our first mountaineering experience.

It’s that way for a lot of people.

Standing at roughly 12,276 feet, Adams is a towering figure in the Cascade Range. But despite its size, it’s a draw for beginners.

The South Spur or South Climb route — the one we took — is fairly approachable and straightforward.

“It’s not a walk in the park, by any means,” said Justin Ewer, wilderness manager in the U.S. Forest Service’s Mount Adams Ranger District.

But it can offer a good first taste, he said. About 12 miles round trip, it typically takes climbers six to eight hours to ascend and four to six hours to get back down.

Many climbers — like Eddie, Courtney and I — choose to break up the trip over two days, camping at or before Lunch Counter, a relatively flat area above Crescent Glacier, before making the summit push.

About 6,000 climbers come to Adams every year, Ewer said. The Forest Service doesn’t keep track of how many make it to the summit, but Ewer guessed it’s a good portion.

In his experience, climbers come to the mountain for many reasons.

For solitude. To enjoy the pristine wilderness, the expansive views — from the top, on a clear day, you can see the peaks of Rainier, Hood, St. Helens.

Also, “(climbing the mountain) presents an opportunity to test yourself. For a lot of people, it’s a significant thing to do,” Ewer said. “It’s out of the ordinary. Being in a different environment than what we’re used to being in — it contrasts the lives most of us live.”

‘Up there’

That’s one of the reasons I wanted to give it a shot. It was something different, something challenging.

If I could climb a mountain, what else might I be able to do?

I got my feet wet with a mountaineering class through the InterMountain Alpine Club. Eddie and Courtney also took part.

We learned about everything from knot-tying to avalanche survival, and gained some great friends and mentors along the way.

One of those mentors was Dave Freepons, who’s led several climbs and who provided guidance as we prepared for Adams. His list of Adams essentials became like scripture to me.

Two pairs of heavy rag wool or SmartWool socks, lightweight polypro liners, ankle-high boots with lug soles and a definite heel, one pair of wool trousers or climbing pants ...

Eddie weighed my pack before he threw it in his truck for the drive to Adams, and it clocked in at 32 pounds.

Even though I had plenty of supplies, I felt anxious as we parked at the trailhead.

We got out and started gearing up — putting on our hiking boots, applying heavy-duty sunscreen, slipping on sunglasses, making sure our Nalgene water bottles were full.

We got to talking. Eddie and Courtney both said they were excited.

But, “I’m a little nervous,” I told them. “... I’m scared, I think, because I don’t know exactly what to expect. You read about it, you watch videos, but it’s not the real thing until you get up there.”

Adams loomed above us. Pretty soon, “up there” is exactly where we’d be.

‘One foot in front of the other’

Like me, Courtney is a reporter. She works for Northwest Public Radio, and she recorded a lot of our trip, including that conversation as we got ready to go.

She’s put together a feature story, which will air soon on 89.1 FM. It’ll also be posted at nwpr.org.

After our first day of hiking, Eddie, Courtney and I camped at about 8,500 feet, just below Lunch Counter.

I was tired and cold, and I didn’t fully appreciate the view. But Courtney snapped a photo.

Lit from within, our tent sat shielded from the wind by a stack of rocks. Clouds stretched out like a fluffy blanket on the horizon.

On the morning of summit day, we woke a little after 4 a.m. to begin our long trudge.

Most of the time, we couldn’t see the summit; it was obscured by the false summit, called Piker’s Peak.

It’s a killer. From the bottom to the top of it, you gain in the neighborhood of 2,000 feet elevation. And you earn every foot.

When it looks like you’re finally about to reach the end of the punishing stretch, there’s still a bit to go.

“There was a false summit to the false summit,” Eddie said later, when we were back on lower ground.

“I got to a point where I had to just start counting steps,” Courtney said. “I’d go 25 steps and then take a teeny, tiny little break. And then go 25 steps.”

I also started counting steps. Sometimes, I could make it to 25, like Courtney. More often, the best I could do was 10. Or five. Or three.

But I realized something: even three steps at a time got me closer to where I wanted to go.

As I was slogging along, I thought of Bill Painter. I interviewed the Richland man several times when he was on a record-breaking streak of Rainier summits.

He became the oldest person to reach the top of the state’s highest peak in 2004, when he was 81 and some change. He broke his own record the next year, and the year after that.

I believe the record still stands today.

Painter died last month at age 93. I wrote one last story about him, talking to friends and family about his legacy.

One of his sons had this to say about his mountain climbing: “It’s nice to call him a tenacious guy. But in our family, we’re just stubborn. That was his key to climbing mountains. He just kept putting one foot in front of the other until we got to the top.”

‘Makes life worth living’

Which brings me to the summit, or just short of it.

After Piker’s Peak, there’s a relatively flat walk to one more incline. The last uphill stretch hurts, not so much because it’s steep, but because of all that comes before.

As I neared the top, I heard Courtney’s words of encouragement.

My legs were rubbery. I was breathing as hard as I ever had. My fingers and toes were numb.

But three steps turned into five, to 10, to 25.

And then, there we were. From 12,276 feet, we could see for miles. We could see Rainier, Hood, St. Helens.

We could see how far we’d come.

“I was so exhausted, my body was tired, everything hurt. But I just felt happy,” Courtney said. “... I’d been waiting to do it for five years, and we finally, finally made it.”

For Eddie, “going up (a mountain), you’re always like, ‘What am I doing this for?’ Then you get to the top and you sit down, and nothing else is there but you,” he said. “It’s what makes life worth living, moments like that.”

I think so too.

I’m so glad I got to have a moment like that on Adams, with my friends. I hope we have many more.

Northwest Public Radio reporter Courtney Flatt contributed to this story.

This story was originally published July 16, 2016 at 7:44 PM with the headline "For Tri-City Herald reporter, Mount Adams climb brings challenge, reward."