Fundraising Update

Wow!  Thank you Friends and Family we are getting closer to our $7000.00 goal for the American Lung Association.  They say climbing Mt. Rainier takes about 80% heart and head, and only 20% physical.  With all the generous support we are getting its going to be pretty easy to have the right head and heart on this adventure. 
Ryan and I sent out an email on February 18th to all of our friends and family; prior to the email we had raised $2015.00.  In the past 10 days we have had our amazing friends and family double the donations!  We are currently at $4098.00, 58.5% of our goal!  We are more than halfway there!
There are 31 days left until the deadline in which we gave ourselves -March 31st.  By March 31st we hope to have reached our goal and raised $7000, that means we have to figure out how to raise $100 a day for the next 31 days.  We know that the American Lung Association is an awesome cause, there is no one else to thank as much as this organization for making living with Asthma easier, no smoking in our bars and restaurants, awesome education for kids to prevent them from smoking, and all the money raised goes to reasrch of serious lung diseases.  Just awesome! 
At our kick-off meeting a week ago, a past climber and fundraiser spoke about the experience and what we should be prepared for fundraising and climbing.  The one thing she said that really gets me excited and terrifies me at the same time is that when you are standing at the top of Mt. Rainier your breathing gets tough, the air is thin and you get a glimpse at the feeling that people feel daily because of a lung disease.  Knowing I will get to feel the thin air excites me because I am headed to the top, but also because with Ryan's asthma I do not understand at all what it feels like and how it can be so much trouble to him at times.   I look forward to being in his shoes, even if its briefly. 
Again all your support is going to make 80% of this climb so easy.

Lake Valhalla Snowshoe

Saturday we had a lazy start to the day, slept in until about 8am!  May not sound early but man work has been requiring early starts and late nights.  On our way out of town we picked up Natasha, sadly Jacob had to work, but having Natasha's company was great!  We hadn't seen Natasha in over three weeks, much too long.  We drove about 6 miles east of Steven's Pass(1hr 45 min drive), parked near the start of Smith Brook Road and headed out into the woods to try and find Lake Valhalla.  I say try to find because the directions in our book were not clear and we were not bent on having a destination so we didn't bring a map.  We did use Natasha's GPS a few times to make sure we were heading in the right direction, which we were, but never actually made it to the lake.  We snowshoed for about 3.5 hours, covered at least 6 miles, and thoroughly exhausted Lily, a perfect day!
Washington Trail Association Website, - provided the details of the hike and directions on how to get to the trailhead.

Katie, Ryan and Lily halfway up the trail

New backpacks in action!

Natasha, Katie and Ryan taking a lunch break, The snow makes some great seats.

Navigation Engineer and Pilot learn to navigate

Post from Ryan!!! This is a long post - but I think I have some making up to do don't I?

Saturday we spent the entire day at Heybrook Ridge just off US 2 near Index, WA this side of Steven's Pass learning real world wilderness navigation skills with The Mountaineers! Unfortunately we could not test out of the class, and in the end I think we must admit that was a good thing. Although we already understood taking a bearing, triangulation, declination, using topo maps, etc, neither of us had ever practiced "leap-frog," "landfall," or "obstacle" navigation methods. Not only that, but we got in probably 2000' vertical feet and 6 miles or so of hiking. At the end of the day we were surprised at how quick the day went and how spent we were! For a great story on where we spent Saturday, take this link.

Activities began with a 4:30AM wake-up!!! We were out the door at 5AM and on to the Mountlake Terrace P&R to meet up with our carpooling buddies Dave and Dennis. We arrived a tad early to a surprising reception of signage and volunteers, an oasis of activity in the still-dark morning! After milling around and waiting for the group of approximately 100 mountaineers to arrive and get situated, we teamed up in small group of 9 (7 students and 2 instructors). Following brief introductions we began en-mass our hike to the ridge where the navigation fun would begin.

The hike up went fast, despite the large group. We spent some time getting to know our small group members and the time just flew by. After about an hour we had reached the powerline clear-cut where we would start by taking bearings between a series of stumps identified by signs. First we worked alone, then we teamed up in two's (Katie and I were separated) and accomplished some word problems. Next Katie and I teamed up again and practiced the leap-frog and landfall methods across the clear-cut, then through the woods a few hundred yards and on to our group lunch spot. In case you (like us) don't know these methods - leap-frogging is where you direct your parter to walk the desired bearing from you, have your partner stop, then you pass your partner and get directed by your partner to travel the desired bearing from your partner's position. So it's just like it sounds, you leap frog eachother. This is helpful in low-viz conditions. Once we hit the woods we transitioned to the landfall method, which is extremely simple and is effectively the same method I already teach flight students when visually navigating, but had never known it by that name. In this case we navigated independently as we took the desired bearing to the nearest easily identifiable landmark (usually a tree, a stump, a rock, and usually within only about 50 feet). Then, just walk to it, break out the compass, and start over. Simple of course, and as we discovered, with an accurate compass can be extremely accurate too! Over a range of 700 feet we found we could navigate to a point within +/- 20'!

Next we sat and had a "working lunch" as we enjoyed our pb&j's, bars, carrots, etc while also taking bearings on prominent distant landmarks to triangulate our position on the topo map. By carefully taking the bearings and carefully drawing the bearings on the map from the major landmarks (Mt Index, Philadelphia Mountain, Baring Peak, etc) you are in theory located where the lines intersect. We were thankful to discover we new where we were!

After lunch we all gathered again for a hike even further up for our "final problem." From the ready area where we received our general instructions we were told to find a stranger and work with him or her. Once we randomly selected our partners we began to travel further uphill, and in both our cases we chose the "most difficult" route instead of the "moderate" or "easy" routes. This effectively just meant we would cover more distance using the landfall method and therefore that we must climb quite a bit before starting. After a healthy climb we reached our launch gate and were given our bearings. My partner and I left first on a 189 degree bearing. We were to navigate independently but to stay in eye shot and within voice contact and if we were to separate laterally to check each other's bearings and perhaps split the difference before continuing.

All in all the course was about a kilometer long downhill through wet and brushy forest filled with deadfall. My partner and I remained within about 25 feet and reached our final destination within 0.5 and 0.75 degrees, respectively, which is pretty darn good. When Katie came down I found out she had bested me by reaching her target within 0.5 degrees, big surprise right? Unfortunately though, we had to assemble the entire group now before heading back to the parking lot, and we were one of the first few groups down to the target area. So for the next hour, we stood around as it finally began to rain. We had some obligatory gear talk with strangers for a bit, then chatted it up with an acquaintance of ours from Boeing who turned out was taking the class with us! He is about to take The Mountaineers kayaking class we took last year and so we discussed that quite a bit, and it was good to catch up with him.

Finally we were all found and it was time to hike out about 1,000 vertical feet and about 2 miles to get back to the car, turn in our grade cards (spoiler alert - we passed), get in the car, and get home.

The drive home was thankfully uneventful with no ski traffic back-ups near Monroe, WA and we were back to the house with plenty of time to spare to get cleaned up for our romantic Valentine's day trip for a couple's cooking class and winery tour at Efeste Winery in Woodinville, WA about 15 minutes east of our house! We made potato croquettes and had a lovely evening together, and I should point out had no marital difficulties while navigating together (not even during leap-frogging!). And this morning our smoked legs let us know how many miles we had put on and how much standing around we had done.

Next up - Mountain Oriented First-Aid (MOFA) with The Mountaineers, a prerequisite for our Scrambling class. Oh, and by the way the new packs were sweeeeeet!

Quick Post-Good Day

Drove into work today just about the same time as sunrise, what a beautiful drive!
Captured this quick picture with my phone, not the best detail but you can see the awesome colors and "The Mountain".  Yep, any day you get to see her; its bound to be a good day.  Especially when its February 2nd - Groundhog's day where Pux. Phil saw his shadow and predicted 6 more weeks of winter.  Also its winter in the lovely Pacific Northwest and its not raining.  So far its been a great day, still sunny!