Images imprinted on our souls – a team of mountaineers descending a glacial ridge with a sweeping mountain-scape spread wide, the occasional indifferent fin splitting the clouds below. The swell of desert dunes giving way to a vertical maroon and tan-colored precipice and a lush green river valley. Perhaps the breathing beating immensity of an ocean wave looming ahead as a sailboat cuts a frothy wake through the blue.

Despite the passing of years and even decades, those images remain vivid. Not just a visual symphony. You can paint the scene across your eyelids, smell the air, and feel the breeze. You can remember the fear rising from your stomach, dismissing it or pushing it down by excitement and resolve.

Mount Baker - North Ridge Ascent to Coleman-Deming Descent

Stats: Roughly 13 miles RT / 7.5 K gain from the Heliotrope 2WD Trailhead.

Difficulty: Grade III, AI3, steep snow

Recommended gear: 60 m twin rope, 3-5 screws, 2 pickets.

The past few years, my mountain dabbling can be classified into failures, partial failures, partial successes and successes, with little consensus on which was which. Baker was no different the first go around. Embarrassingly, we failed because we didn’t so much as look at a map. The internet gods say the North Ridge goes. The internet gods say the North Ridge is relatively casual – a step of ice and plenty of steep snow. The internet gods did not mention the North Ridge was actually the northwest spur.

It didn’t take us long to figure out we were on the wrong ridge that trip. Funny thing is, we saw a slow guided party on the correct ridge and bypassed them thinking we were watching a total noob-fest. Turns out, we were the noobs.

This time around, we had a few more hours of sleep and the vague memories of the correct ridge (let’s be honest; we still hadn’t looked at a map). An hour of steep trail with scattered drifts led us to treeline and another half hour of post holing up to the Heliotrope camps. Most of the climbers were already out and about and the sun was tinging the skyline.

On with the crampons, but we don’t bother with the rope. The Coleman and Roosevelt Glaciers are fairly straightforward this early in the year and we’re able to pick up tracks from two parties ahead.

The ridge starts out with moderate snow, bypassing a headwall right. A lengthy section of moderate snow on the ridge slowly ramps up to steep and the ice step. The ice step goes anywhere from AI2/3 far left to AI4/5 further right. We were able to pass the two parties on the snow and take our pick, pulling out the rope and setting a picket belay. My partner (Robert Mascarenas) chose a steeper line on right, freeing up the left lines for the other two parties.

The ice is deceptive – a little bulge with loose feet proves the crux. Still, it takes a few screws and provides some solid sticks. To avoid ice fall on the exposed belay, Robert stops after the step and sets a screw belay. One party started up just left of us and continues going higher and further, raining down ice. A large piece strikes me in the mouth just as I’m pulling the belay. I press my face to the ice and can see that my nose, lips, and chin are bleeding. The numbness and swollen nature makes it difficult to tell if my ugly mug gets to add to its stitches collection or if it’s just a scrape (it was).

At the belay, I grab the screws and our single picket and run up another rope length, placing the screw early and a picket with microtraxion later. After a full length and then some, Robert comes up on my tool belay and continues up the broad ridge. We move as a rope team up the remainder of the ridge, over a 4-ft avalanche scarp, left beneath some threatening seracs, and across the summit plateau to the summit.

We see the shadows on the wall and wonder if they’re real and if we care.

A persistent light wind keeps our summit stay short. Away go the ropes and gear, and down the well-traveled Coleman-Deming, mostly low angle with few crevasses this early in the season. We pass a few rope teams, the first giving us an irritated look for being unroped. This is their first big mountain, first time moving roped, and there’s obvious frustration boiling over.

Continuing down the slopes, the clouds move in briefly, placing us in a ping pong ball and alleviating the toaster. Out from the ping pong and a quick glissade down to the Heliotrope camps (again, soliciting shouts) and we meet up with our good friend Emily and her crew, planning on the C-D route and a sunrise summit the next day.

Down to the car, and drive on south with a stockpile of Chipotle burritos to start our next objective the following evening.

Rainier – Liberty Ridge Ascent to Emmons Descent

Stats: Roughly 16 miles RT / 10.5 K gain from the White River Trailhead.

Difficulty: Grade IV, AI3, 4^th class rock, steep snow

Recommended gear: 60 m twin rope, 5-7 screws, 2 pickets.

To be honest, I wasn’t particularly stoked on Liberty Ridge. The elitist devil on the shoulder says it’s too crowded and too risky per the reward with minimal technical climbing for a closet adrenaline junkie. Robert is a great partner, but he isn’t my usual partner for long cardio routes and I wasn’t sure how he’d hold up. But our conditions window was really quite fantastic, so might as well give it a go. This turned out to be a good idea.

Oddly enough, 10PM isn’t the earliest I’ve started for a peak. But it still feels pretty rough. Around 11PM, we run into a pair coming down from a daytrip of Liberty Ridge. They’re toasted. 24 hours on the move and vague hints of smiles easing through their wariness knowing they're but a short walk from the car.

Once out of the trees, the route goes up and over St Elmo Pass right of the Interglacier. We break our own trail part of the way until intersecting a bootpack heading over a pass just left of St Elmo. The tracks cross the ridge and drop down to the Winthrop, where we opted to rope up and throw on crampons while crossing the glacier parallel to the crevasses. After a ways, the main boot pack dropped low beneath Curtis Ridge prior to regaining a several hundred feet. The beta I had read (admittedly sparse) said to stay high and rappel onto the Carbon around 7,800 ft, so we trudge across to there only to see it would be a series of nasty rappels. Two multi-day parties are on the glacier below us. Close yet so far. We drop Curtis Ridge until roughly 7,360 ft, where easy scree passage leads to the glacier. All in all, the mishap costs us some time, but probably not much compared to the low bootpack.

The Carbon is easy to navigate, eventually meandering beneath the Willis Wall and gaining the ridge via a nasty class 3 or 4 loose scramble on the left side, where we unrope. We pass one party planning to camp on the summit and wait for them to gain the ridge before scrambling higher, justifiably afraid of showering them with rock.

I catch up to a ski party of three doing the Ridge as a two-day trip. Rare indeed. Three days are easier than one day, and one day is easier than two in my opinion. That’s a lot of weight. The night before, they collapsed into their tents with the platform chopped out at the outskirts of the Willis Wall debris field. Too close for comfort in my mind.

My partner is crashing pretty hard here, about 8 hours to get to the base of the ridge and depleted of both calories and rest. But we had 6K gain to go in full sun. I express my concerns to him and urge speed. He eats a Snickers and downs some salt, recovering admirably.

Up the snow, mostly sustained and moderately steep. We pass two parties at Thumb Rock, Robert recognizing one guy from a Wyoming project he is working on. More moderately steep snow with the occasional rockfall to dodge or keep an eye on. The route mostly stays on the left side of the broad ridge. Eventually, we reach the glittering ice slopes by the Black Pyramid. Perhaps 45-55 degrees with hero quality sticks.

A rock or two screams down the ice, so we pull out the rope in case one knocks us aside. One screw anchor at the base and Robert takes the first block, leading about 250 feet with a microtraxion after a rope length and several screws to work with.

I reach him and the rope is a tangle. At this point, I’m getting a little frustrated at our pace and inefficiencies. My head isn’t the best for objective hazards and I like to move fast, or at least as fast as my short little legs can muster. We sort it out and I take the next block. I milk our screws, making it another few hundred feet before reaching snice and snow. I place the microtraxion at the start of the snow and milk another few hundred feet out of our pickets, reaching a sheltered spot beneath the final bergschrund to belay off a boot ax. Robert is moving consistent and well at this point and the burden of “will we make it” eases off. Robert's hooting and hollering, incredibly stoked to be there with such great conditions.

The final bergschrund ramps are steep snow switchbacks and I lead off with a picket or two at the corners. Finally, we reach the low angle slopes of the summit dome and Liberty Cap around 1PM. Bright and sunny and hardly a trace of wind.

My first time up Rainier was during a July 4^th weekend. I couldn’t see a thing and I was swaddled in down. Not going to lie, the scene was a little anticlimactic. I guess I prefer graceful ridgelines defying imagination as they cut across the sky, impossibilities apparent along every route one's eye can trace. A looming stratovolcano is inspiring too, but I felt a stranger up high, nothing nearby for gawking or bestowing humility.

After a brief enjoyment, we continue down the well-traveled Emmons route, still in good condition with few crevasses of note. At the ranger cabin, we’re thankful to drop off our blue bags, scramble up Ships Prow, and begin the long slushy glissade down Interglacier to the trail. We hit the car at 6PM, stumble through food and hotel in Enumclaw, admire the extent of our sunburns, and promptly pass out.

So when and where was the image imprinted across my soul? In the sea of peaks which have consumed my free time over the past decade, where will this trip stand and which memories will vie for attention above the rest in the years to come?

Only time will tell, but I think it was somewhere around here.