This trip is hard to pack for because it's super hot at the bottom of the mountain (90 degrees F) and cold and windy at the top, before the sun comes out (10 degrees F.)  I tried to pack light.  I figured I'd rather suffer from being cold than suffer from carrying extra weight.  (We climbed Rainier on June 7th.)

Day 1: Parking lot - to camp Muir

Unless you're superman, and trying to set world records, mount Rainier takes two days to climb (we did it in 24 hours, but since we "slept" one night, I'll call it two days.)  Leave the parking lot at the base of the mountain in the afternoon on the first day, arrive at camp Muir that night, set up your tent, eat food, boil snow, and sleep for a half hour before waking up at night to start summit day.  The fist part of the climb is the easier part, more or less a steep climb on rocks and glacier snow, you don't need your crampons yet.  It is hot, the sun reflects off the snow, shorts and a T-shirt are necessary.  The bottom of the mountain is beautiful and you will understand why this area is a National park.  This part of the trek will take somewhere between 4 and 7 hours depending on your pace. 

When you wake up at 1:00 am to start day two, this is where it starts to get exciting.  Wake up, fix your headlamp to your helmet, tighten your crampons to your boots, and connect your harness to the rope.  I'm far from an expert on rope maneuvering, but my Seattle-native friends showed me what was up.  We evenly spaced ourselves about 10 meters apart on a about a 50 meter rope (give or take.)  The sky was void of clouds and a full moon was painting the snow silver as the climber's lanterns ahead of us flickered in the distance, imitating from the stars above our heads.  

From camp Muir you will cross a valley and then start to ascend a steep rocky cliff.  Good footing and a bright headlamp is important as there are steep, deadly drops inches from where you're climbing.  This segment is a literal climb, you have to maneuver up and around rocks, in a zig-zag pattern up the face of this cliff.  The screeching noise your crampons make as they attempt to gain traction on the rocks is a horrendous sound..  A helmet is important/recommended here because rope teams above you will inadvertently kick rocks down onto the path below (this happened over a dozen times).  During our decent, someone kicked off a rock the size of a bowling ball, it fell a hundred feet and impacted direct center of the trail.  You gotta stay frosty here.  

After this steep cliff area comes some cool crevasse crossings that will make you feel like an 'Icefall doctor.'  Then there are some major sloped glaciers to cross.  A path through the ice and snow is about 10 inches wide, and one slip to the left will take you and your rope crew off a 500 foot cliff.  At this point you are starting to get pretty high up, and the altitude is making climbing a little harder.  You are also exposed to the wind, and it's getting pretty cold with the sun still below the horizon (probably around 0-10 degrees F with windchill).

Eventually the sun comes up, and you can almost see the summit. 

By the time we got to the top, we were all pretty exhausted.  I believe I just laid down in the snow and closed my eyes for 10 minutes.  Eventually the sun started to warm us which provided some much needed energy.  We snagged some badass hero pictures, ate some food, then started across the barren volcanic crater to our descent.  The downward journey was fun and fast.  The sun reflecting off the snow again was hot, and we did most of the downhill in our T's.  After the precarious cliff area, we started slipping and falling our way down the melting glaciers with a skip in our step.  

Eventually we arrived back at camp Muir, took down our tents and shoved our belongings into our 65 liter packs.  From here you can run and slide down the mountain as you don't need to be roped up and you're done with crampons.  Making quick time, we got back to all the tourists at the bottom, their eyes staring in awe at the rugged mountain men we have become...

Craving food and drink, we threw our packs in the car and drove to a local "restaurant" out in the boonies and had the worst meal of our life.  lol but that's a whole 'nother story...