I decided to take this one week winter mountaineering course to refresh my memory on mountaineering skills, learn some new ones (traveling on snowshoes, assessing avalanche danger, and using avalanche beacons to locate people buried by avalanches), and have a second chance to summit the mountain that I had made it only halfway up on a summer trip with a group of friends many years ago.

It became clear to me after three days that we were not likely to make much progress up the mountain. As I later learned, this is common for the winter mountaineering course. We remained low on the mountain, camping near the Paradise parking lot, and taking day trips up to practice various techniques. April is not a good month to be on Rainier. It is between seasons; too late for real winter, too early for real spring. Each day was the same. Temperatures hovered around freezing, and the days were filled with precipitation from beginning to end.

Sometimes, cold rain froze on our clothes, sometimes warm snow melted on our clothes. In either case, the result was the same. Although each of us was covered from head to toe in GoreTex, we were all soaking wet shortly after setting out each morning. We had no heaters or campfires to dry our clothes; the best way to dry them was to wear the insulating layers to bed, and let body heat dry them overnight. So, each night I crawled into my sleeping bag wearing my wet fleece jacket, socks, and gloves. Each morning, I was ecstatic to wake up wearing warm and dry clothes. Each day, they were wet again within 15 minutes of going outside.

On the first day, after meeting mid-morning at a hotel outside of the park, we reviewed and packed our own gear, rented whatever equipment we needed (boots, snowshoes, ski poles, avalanche beacons, and parkas were available for those who needed them), and divided up the group gear (ropes, stoves, fuel, and some food). We then drove to Paradise. Many rode in a company van, while I chose to drive my own rental car (this later proved to be a good choice).

At Paradise, we put on our packs and snowshoes, then clumsily headed into the snow and up the mountain. For many, including me, this was our first time on snowshoes. Although I was surprised at how easy they are to use, they nevertheless take some time to get used to (hint: never try to back up while wearing snowshoes!).

By snowshoeing an hour or two, we made it perhaps 500 ft (150 meters) vertically up the mountain. There, we located a good place to camp; deep snow in which we could dig our kitchen. The guides dug our kitchen - small room dug into the snowdrifts, tall enough to stand up in, room for two people side-by-side, completely open on one side, and with a broad snow ledge to set stoves on. The rest of us prepared platforms for our tents, then set our tents up. Tent platforms in snow are easy to construct, although tedious. You need to dig a flat area in the snow, big enough for the tent, plus a couple extra feet (a meter or so) on all sides. By digging the tent platform slightly below snow level, and piling the snow up on the edges of the platform, you create walls several feet (a meter or so) high. These walls protect the tent from any strong winds.

Having set up our camp, we all traveled to a nearby open hillside to learn how to find buried objects using an avalanche beacon. The purpose of this device is to help locate quickly a person who has been buried in an avalanche. The beacon is a small radio transmitter/receiver, about the size of a small transistor radio. It can be changed between receive and transmit modes by rotating a hidden knob. Whenever we're traveling in an area where there could be an avalanche, each of us carries a beacon inside our jackets, turned to "transmit." In this mode, the beacon emits a radio frequency "beep" every second or so.

If someone were to be buried by an avalanche, the remainder of the group would turn their beacons to "receive" and begin to look for the buried person as soon as it is safe to do so (This must be within a few minutes, or it is often too late). The beacon has a very directional antenna, so by turning it from side to side and listening for the loudest beep from the now-buried transmitter, you can determine the general direction to the buried person. Then, with practice, you can quickly locate the buried person by repeatedly walking in one direction, then in a perpendicular direction, each time locating the point of maximum volume, then turning down the volume until the beep is just audible.

To practice, our instructor had us turn our backs while they buried a beacon, then let us locate it. After a few attempts, we are able to retrieve the beacon within 2 1/2 minutes.

Later in the afternoon, we learned about examining the snow to estimate avalanche danger. One way to do this is to dig a put in the snow, leaving a square column of undisturbed snow in the middle. The column should be about 18 inches (0.5 meters) on each side. After isolating the column, brush its side to look for layering in the snow. Afterwards, use a shovel to push horizontally on the top of the column. Notice where it shears, and how hard you have to push to shear it. If it shears easily, the snowpack is unstable.

This was the end of our training for the first day. We returned to our snow camp, ate dinner, and settled down in our tents, cold and wet, for the night. As I shivered myself to sleep, I wondered why I had come on this trip.

Awakening on the next morning, I was delighted to find that my wet clothes dried overnight while I wore them in my sleeping bag. This lifted my spirits tremendously!

The second days's goal was to reach Camp Muir, at an altitude of approximately 10000 feet (3100 meters), approximately 4000 feet (1300 meters) higher than our first night's camp. The plan was for Camp Muir, which had a building we could sleep in, as well as stored food and fuel we could use, to be our camp for the remainder of the training course.

After eating breakfast, we packed away all the things we would not take to Camp Muir (stoves, fuel, tents) and buried them under the snow, marking the spot with a flag so we could find it again when we returned later in the week.We then packed all our remaining gear into our backpacks, put on our snowshoes, and began the long climb towards Camp Muir.

It was snowing as we began that day, and the snow continued throughout the day. I was again cold and wet within ten minutes of leaving the tent.

Within an hour after leaving camp, we reached a steep hillside that required us to take off our snowshoes and put on our crampons. By the time we reached this hill, the weather had deteriorated; it was foggy, snowy, cold, and windy.

Putting on and using our crampons was a chaotic scene that surprises me even now. We had not been trained in crampon use the previous day, and so here we were trying to use them for the first time on a steep hill, in a snowstorm, with full packs on. Those of us, like me, who had used crampons before, were OK. Many people in the group had not used crampons before, and this was not a good place to learn! Despite this, we all managed to get up the hill (some more easily than others) and continue on our way.

We did not continue for long, however. The weather continued to deteriorate, and after another hour, our guides decided that we must turn around and go back down. Disappointed, we retraced our steps back to last night's camp, dug up our stored items, and headed all the way back down to the parking lot where we had started our trip the day before. (We could not stay in last night's camp since we did not have enough dinner food; the amount of dinner food we brought assumed that we would make it to Camp Muir on the second night).

I don't know how anyone else in the group felt, but I was very disappointed about having to give up all the gains we had worked so hard to attain. We set up camp in an excellent location, on the snow among a group of snow-covered pine trees, immediately adjacent to the climbing school's office building at Paradise. We were careful not to pitch our tents under any snow-laden branches that might dump on our tent.

After setting up camp, we traveled several hundred yards (meters), to a location where we could practice self-arrest. Self-arrest is a technique to stop yourself using an ice axe and your feet, if you begin sliding down a hillside. In the absence of safe hills in the area (the only nearby open hillside was steep, long, and led into a forest), we practiced in the snow piles adjacent to the hotel. The hotel was closed for the winter.

That night, we ate dinner in the climbing company's unheated, closed-for-the-winter offices, but it was much better than sitting outside. Afterwards, almost the entire group collected in the bathrooms. We took turns desperately trying to dry our jackets, socks, and mittens, using the electric hand dryers. After several hours of this, our clothes were marginally drier, but we were definitely warmer.

We again retired to our tents for a second cold wet night. I again wondered why I had come on this trip. I was reluctant to "be a quitter" by leaving, yet I also knew that I had learned most of what I wanted to. I also believed it was unlikely that we would reach the summit unless the following morning was bright and sunny. The only other remaining goal for me, learning how to build a snow cave, seemed not to be worth another three days and nights similar to those we had already been through.

Evaluating the probable gains versus the probably misery, I decided that if the following day did not start well, I would leave. This meant two things. First, if the group headed for Camp Muir and I believed it was unlikely they would summit, I would leave. Second, if the weather was bad and the group camped again near the Paradise parking lot, I would stay. In reality, I just couldn't face more miserable trudges partway up the mountain, with no real success to show for it. After deciding this, I shivered myself to sleep in my damp clothes.

The following morning, the situation was uncertain. The weather was better (it was not raining/snowing), but cloud levels were still low and the weather reports were not encouraging. I decided that it was unlikely the group would summit, so I spoke with our lead guide. I told him that if/when the group headed for Camp Muir, I would leave.

For the next hour or so, the situation remained uncertain, as our guides evaluated conditions and checked the forecasts. Eventually, they decided to head for Camp Muir. I said goodbye to the group members, then watched and took pictures as they headed up the slopes we had just gone up two days ago, and come down the afternoon before.

Afterwards, I spent another hour or so taking pictures. As I did so, snow/rain began to fall, and I became more confident of my decision to leave.

Then, I went into the lounge in the National Park Service where my group many years before had spent hours drying off after a failed, wet summer attempt on this mountain. I again took off all my wet outer layers, spread them out on the carpeted benches, and sat for several hours. Unlike the previous time I was here, this time I was all alone. Since it was winter, no other people or groups came in to use the lounge, either.

After spending a couple hours drying out, thinking about this trip, and remembering the trip years before, I went to my car and dug it out from the two feet (0.7 meters) or so of snow that had fallen since I parked it two days earlier. This was where it became important that I had driven myself to Paradise, since I now had a way to get down from Mt. Rainier without having to wait for the rest of the group, and without having to make special transportation arrangements.

I drove back to civilization, got a motel room for the night, changed my flights so that I could go home the next day, and called Julie to tell her about my experiences.

In retrospect, leaving was the right decision for me. I later learned that the group had returned to the Paradise parking lot later that afternoon. They spent the remainder of the course camped in the trees adjacent to the parking lot, and making day trips up the hills for training/practice.

Sometimes, mountaineering is not about getting to the top, but realizing when it is not worth the misery or the risk. Nevertheless, Rainier still eludes me after two attempts. Perhaps next summer I'll be back there again.