Those sounds, along with staggered, labored breaths, are all that penetrated the quiet of 3 a.m. on Washington's Mount Baker in July 1988.
This is the coolest thing I've ever done! I thought. I was 13 years old and I was roped up on a real glacier, climbing a real mountain.
Overall, that first climbing experience was miserable but worth every hardship. Cold rain soaked our high camp for five days, with just a brief respite for our summit attempt. Without enough food, we were hungry every day. Worst of all, we turned around 500 feet shy of the summit because of dangerous snow conditions.
I was absolutely crushed. The summit appeared so close I felt like I could touch it. As we plunge-stepped down the slushy glacier that afternoon, tears welled up and spilled down my cheeks.
Even so, I felt a visceral connection to the mountain, and to climbing, that I'd never felt doing anything else. My experience on Mount Baker ignited the fire for climbing that I've fed ever since.
Last Wednesday, I heard the same pre-dawn sounds of metal on snow. I climbed the same glaciers, jumped the same crevasses and felt a familiar urgency for Mount Baker's summit in my gut. Only this time I, along with Ian Wayne, was leading seven teenagers up the mountain for the same summer camp (Camp Nor'Wester) that introduced me to climbing in 1988.
For most of the three girls and four boys (14 to 16 years old), this five-day trip was their first time snow camping, let alone climbing a mountain. I taught them how to walk in snow, how to self-arrest with an ice axe and how to manage glacier travel as a rope team.
I woke them up at midnight, after just a few hours of sleep, so we could avoid the slushy snow that turned my team around when I was a camper. Like Doug Ironside who guided my trip back then, I led our group as a compassionate hard-ass: sort of a drill sergeant-slash-friendly counselor. I pushed them until it hurt: Augie collapsed at each rest spot, Carina felt altitude-sick and Cole had to work to keep up.
But the summit required the suffering. It always does.
We made the final steps to the top at 10:40 a.m., more than eight hours after leaving camp. An ocean of clouds obscured everything below; only Glacier Peak and Mount Rainier poked their peaks above the fog. My exhausted team relished a sunny hour on the summit where, between mouthfuls of peanut butter and chocolate, four of them volunteered that climbing Mount Baker was the hardest thing they'd ever done.
On the descent, Lilly fought tears because her borrowed boots rubbed her shins raw. Carina still felt sick despite the increased oxygen. And Augie screamed in frustration when he tripped over the rope time and again.
But soon we were safely in camp, and for a few minutes a burst of energy seemed to possess the campers. They'd worked harder than ever before, as a team, to achieve a fleeting yet strangely meaningful task. A little later the energy dissipated, and camp was quiet again as we all crashed in our tents before the sun had set.
As a 13-year-old, the Mount Baker attempt with Camp Nor'Wester was the most grueling five days of my life. Not only did I learn how to camp in the snow and to climb mountains, I learned how to work as a team, to doggedly dig deep and to deal with disappointing failure. For me, it was a rite of passage where none other existed.
I can only hope that each of the seven teenagers I guided last week walked away from the mountain having learned something similar about themselves -- something intangible -- that will one day come full circle, like it just did for me.
Chris Weidner:Daily Camera
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