Sheldon Meuer finds first ascent of Mount Rainier intimidating, exhilarating

Sheldon Meuer couldn’t see the summit but surely, he thought, his group was getting closer to the top of Mount Rainier.

It was foggy and snowing with winds at about 40 mph and visibility about 10 feet.

The last time he asked his guide how far they had to go, she said another 900 feet. That would take another 90 minutes – 90 harrowing minutes at times.

“It was a little bit steep and it was difficult,” Meuer said. “The breathing was difficult, not the climbing. At that point it was a fight to keep going, to keep breathing properly.”

Rewind three weeks. Out of the blue, Meuer got a text from a friend who had put together a climbing exhibition for Mount Rainier as a fund raiser for leukemia and lymphoma research. One of the climbers had to bail and Meuer’s friend from their days at Mead High School, Mark Porterfield, was offering Meuer a chance of a lifetime with all expenses paid.

“I told him to give me a day to think about it,” Meuer said. He called his brothers, also Mead grads, and asked what they thought.

“They both said it was a no-brainer,” Meuer said.

Meuer texted Porterfield back in 10 minutes and said he was a go.

A district circulation manager for 26 years with The Spokesman-Review, Meuer’s first thought after accepting the invitation was whether he was in good enough physical condition to attempt the climb. He’d never climbed a mountain like Rainier although he regularly hikes Tubbs Hill in Coeur d’Alene.

He loves the outdoors, hunts elk in high elevation and fishes, runs and does hikes. But trying to climb Mount Rainier?

“Mark told me ‘we’re all old, you’ve got as good a chance as any of us’,” said Meuer, 46, who lives in Post Falls.

Not exactly comforting, but Meuer wasn’t going to back out. He later learned that one of the guides had made it to the top of Rainier more than 400 times.

None of the seven in the group had ever climbed Mount Rainier. So Porterfield assured Meuer he was in good company.

“I was fairly confident I could make it,” Meuer said.

The only expense for Meuer was getting to Seattle. He estimated it probably would have cost him close to $3,000 – the fee for a guide in addition to renting all the required gear – if he had paid for it himself.

So he met up with Porterfield and the group in Seattle. They rented their gear in Seattle and were driven to Paradise Lodge, the starting point of the climb. Paradise Lodge is at 5,420 feet elevation.

“I really don’t remember anything about the drive up,” Meuer said.

He was preoccupied with wondering what he had gotten himself into.

The actual climb is about 9,000 feet to Mount Rainier’s summit, which is at 14,410 feet.

After arriving at Paradise Lodge and getting acclimated, the group was off. They hiked 5,000 feet and camped at Muir, where there is a structure for climbers to eat and sleep. The Muir route, located on the southeast flank, is one of a dozen commonly used to ascend Rainier.

Meuer slept well the first night, about eight hours, after having expended so much adrenaline through climbing and just his overall excitement of the adventure.

Come morning, the group spent the first half of the day in what Meuer called snow school. They were preparing for the difficult stretch ahead that included walking over extended ladders across deep crevasses with their crampons – boots with extended spikes for better footing.

Once the training was over, the group climbed just 1,000 feet reaching Ingraham Flats where they set up their tents. It was about 4 in the afternoon. After having dinner, the guides told the group to go to bed because they would be getting up around midnight for the final ascent depending on the weather conditions.

The third day proved to be long. They started climbing at midnight and reached the summit in 6 1/2 hours. But then they turned around and returned to Paradise Lodge, which took another 8 1/2 hours.

Meuer remembers one stretch where he just about lost his composure. He was trying to walk in every step of the guide in front of him, tethered to her by a rope, when they reached a point Meuer didn’t know if he could go on.

He has a theory on why the final ascent is done in the dark.

“It’s probably better that you don’t see everything that’s around you because it might intimidate you,” Meuer said.

Meuer said the guides listen closely to the climbers’ breathing.

“They teach you how to breathe at altitude,” he said. “If your breathing becomes shallow or you don’t get deep breaths, they make a sound to remind you.”

Meuer’s difficult moment came as they climbed near a glacier.

“I’d never heard a glacier cracking and groaning before,” Meuer said. “And you could really smell sulpher because the mountain is an active volcano. That was really cool. I freaked out on top of it. We were on a path that was about 16 to 17 inches wide and really steep. I lost concentration for a moment. It was probably for just 2 or 3 minutes but it seemed like it was 20 minutes. I was bordering on hyperventilating.”

Meuer laughed about it later because he remembers when they began to climb down he wasn’t excited about encountering that glacier again. But they went past it when Meuer realized his concern was for naught.

“We crossed it and it just showed that it was completely in my head,” Meuer said.

It’s estimated that about 10,000 people attempt to climb Mount Rainier each year. The success rate is a little over 50 percent.

Meuer’s group passed many other climbers along the way and passed them returning from the summit. Two groups ahead of them had to turn back because climbers got sick. It’s not a given that one will make it to the top.

He said there were bottlenecks with other climbers at times because they were on one of the more popular trails.

One of those bottlenecks occurred at Disappointment Cleaver.

“It’s one of the worst places to stop because there could be falling rock around you,” Meuer was told.

Only a couple times was Meuer rendered to climbing belly to mountain. Most of the time, with the aid of an ice ax or pole similar to cross country skiing, the climbing isn’t too difficult, he said.

The group only got to spend about 10 minutes at the top, which is relatively flat with a crater shape.

“They were expecting bad weather and the guides told us we needed to get going back down,” Meuer said.

Along the way, though, Meuer was able to take multiple pictures.

“The pictures don’t do it justice though,” Meuer said. “That mountain is massive.”

During the climb, Meuer kept telling himself he would never try it again.

Then, a couple of days after returning to his home in Post Falls, Meuer got a text from Porterfield.

“He asked if they had the opportunity to climb it again if I’d do it,” Meuer said. “I said ‘hell yes.’”

Meuer knows it was an experience of a lifetime.

“I got more out of it than I thought I would,” Meuer said.

Meuer remembered a feeling of exhilaration when he first saw the summit. He was about 40 yards away.

“But there were moments of exhilaration all along the way,” Meuer said.