Summit Quest

Editor’s note: This is the first of a series of stories by Spokane writer Maryanne Gaddy regarding her novice plunge into mountaineering and her current immersion in the three-month Mountain School conducted each spring by the Spokane Mountaineers, celebrating their 90th anniversary.

I always knew I was a hot hiker, but this was ridiculous.

As we trudged through the snow and shrubs near Mount Spokane, the sweat and snot began to pour. Today was a day for lessons, and I was learning them fast. Two clothing layers are good, five layers, not so good; handkerchiefs are not just for grandpas; and having a big bottom can be a blessing if it lifts the weight of a pack the size of a 10-year-old off your shoulders.

“Why, why, why?” I berated myself with each overheated step as we approached the halfway mark. “How did I end up here?”

Some switch went off in my brain a few years back, probably the one labeled “almost 30,” and I suddenly had an intense desire to try and experience everything. Last summer, I joined the Spokane Mountaineers to take their rock climbing school.

Instantly I became addicted to the sport. After spending the summer hanging around the local crags and listening to adventure stories, climbing every mountain became my next goal. So I signed up for the Mountaineers’ three-month-long Mountain School.

Beginning in early March, 34 prospective mountaineers and myself, and more than 40 volunteer instructors with a thousand years of collective experience, began by spending Wednesday nights learning about survival in one of the earth’s most inhospitable environments while pursuing one of the most insane goals possible: the summit.

Any summit. Every summit.

We’re not completely insane. Reaching the bottom again is far more important than reaching the top. So we want to learn to do it right.

First lesson: Spend a small fortune. Proper boots cost $400, or not, in my case. A good pack is $350. Uh, right. I go bargain shopping and come up with a reasonable facsimile at $80.

Polyester wicking underwear was essential, $26. That I could do.

Compass, glasses, stove, sleeping bag … the list went on and on. By the end, I couldn’t even afford a Band Aid and was reduced to lifting a few for my first-aid kit from the box on the lunchroom wall at work.

Next lesson: Stay warm. Long underwear is a start, and the down parka and sleeping bag, help, but the clothing part seems obvious. It was longtime mountain man Scot Nass who introduced us to the extremes.

When you’re high on a mountain, it’s often so cold, you can’t go out of the tent at night to do your business, he said. What to do? Get an old water bottle, collect your bodily fluids without ever leaving the comfort of your sleeping bag, and after securing the cap very, very tightly, use it as a hot water bottle.

Can’t wait to try that one out.

After a few weeks of instruction and practice hikes, our first big adventure involved snow camping near Mount Spokane. And miracle of miracles in this non-winter of 2005, it actually snowed. At 11 a.m. the first morning, about 40 students and instructors set out with Jason Lenhart and Rich Bennet, mountain school directors.

It had been pretty cold standing around, so I was smothered with clothes when we started the hike: polypro covered by a running shirt and a lined fleece jacket topped with a fleece vest, a fleece hat and lined mountaineering gloves.

The hat came off before we even started up the face. Ten minutes later, the gloves were dangling from their leashes. A few minutes after that, the sweating began.

The vest came off, then the jacket. I had been near the front of the line, but glumly watched my peers file past as I stowed the extra layers in my pack. I struggled to catch up, but for half the mountain I hiked alone in my bright blue T-shirt, unable to catch the fast group and unwilling to wait for the second.

That’s when the inner grumbler appeared. “This is stupid. You’re stupid. I hate this. Why?”

All the while, rivers were running off my face. It just wouldn’t stop. My hair was soaked completely through as were my two shirts. And it was freezing out.

When the front-runners finally stopped for a little break and I caught up and had a chance to rest, my hair froze in about a minute. The wind was howling as we continued over the top, yet that inner heat never let up.

Getting over the top was nice. The hard part was over, now the fun could begin. We quickly spread out along the edge of a clearing, and dug in our positions. Some people, carried away by their enthusiasm, or possibly foreseeing the empty hours to come, essentially built igloos around their tents.

My tent-mate, Valerie Wade, and I dug a pit in front of our tent door so we could sit with our feet over the edge like we were on a front porch. It would have provided an excellent wind shield to protect our stove when we boiled water, that is, if we could have got the stove to work.

Good to know about a broken stove before you go on a real climb.

We went over everything. Insulated mats go down first followed by the sleeping bags. Find a protected place for your boots or they’ll freeze solid in the night. If it’s bitterly cold, bury your water bottle in the snow to keep it from freezing.

Ear plugs are your friends.

Bennet and Lenhart quickly dug out a sectional sofa and matching coffee table by lifting out blocks of snow to form a bench about a foot down, then continuing down another 18 inches to create a floor. About a dozen people congregated in this clever little pit, foam pads under their bums to keep warm and plastic bags of reconstituted food in their hands.

Miniature gas stoves, sounding like jet engines, provided hot water for coffee and tea. Conversation flowed far faster than the booze. Chocolates were passed around, followed by a round of hand and foot warmers.

This went on till about, oh, 6:45 p.m., when people began to drop like flies. There’s just not much to do when you’re snow camping — no skinny dipping, and no roasting marshmallows or blowing up cans of beer in the fire. No fire, for that matter, so once the sun goes down, the party dies fast.

At first light, we did it all in reverse. Get the snow off the tent, a fortune’s worth of gear back in the bag, and hoist that 40 pounds back on your weary shoulders. But, the walk down felt like exactly that, a walk.

As we said our goodbyes at the bottom, I felt that warm fuzzy feeling come over me, like when I finished a really hard rock route or when I crossed the finish line for a marathon.

I did it. We did it.

We had climbed our first mountain. Along the way, no one cried, whined or pouted. We all carried our own load, and everyone who set out, finished. Each and every one of us did it as a team, and did it on our own.

And this is just the beginning. This was only testing out our gear on Mount Spokane. We still have three-fourths of the class to go.

Over the years, hundreds of men and women have graduated from Mountain School. Some of them have gone on to scale some of the most difficult peaks in the world.

And some of those very same people started out just like me: thinking Mount Spokane was a mountain.