All Blog Posts Tagged 'mountaineering' (8)

1. Increased fitness. It’s not easy hiking up snow with a heavy pack for hours on end and doing it at high altitude. Mountain climbing is one of the most physically demanding sports there is. However, if you’ve trained properly, most of your fitness gains will come before your big climb. 

 When training to climb Mt. Kilimanjaro, I spent two hours a day training during the week and got out every weekend on mountaineering trips in the Cascade Mountains. Shortly after, I beat my…

This is a cool project FitClimb recommends others check out and contribute to:

12 mountains. 30 days. This summer a team of six college students will be climbing 12 Cascade volcanoes and making a full length documentary on both their journey and the effects of climate change on these mountains and their shrinking glaciers. While challenging themselves physically and mentally for this journey, the team also hopes to spread awareness of climate change and…

This along with what is the safest month to climb Mt. Rainier is a popular questions from our members.   Late spring and summer are when conditions are best, starting in May and ending in September.  Realize conditions on the mountain change weekly and may be different from year to year but generally you can expect the following in each month:

May

Much of the mountain is still in deep snow, even at the parking lot.  Most of the crevasses are covered…

Last Thursday May 15^th all four major US . carriers, Verizon, AT&T, T-Mobile, and Sprint have started offering text to 911 in some states.   Text to 911 is the ability of a mobile phone or device to reach emergency services by texting a message.   The main use cases are when a person can’t speak, hear, or need to call for help in a stealthy mode.  The main benefit for outdoor enthusiasts is to get through to 911 in areas of…

Not only is this a good skill to woo friends with but its useful in navigation and outdoors.  Take a look at the following picture, can you tell how far different land features are?    Here’s a general rule that works in areas with trees, you can use trees as a reference point for pin pointing the distance of other objects.

1. You can see individual…

Mountaineering while pregnant isn’t most people’s idea of fun, my circle of friends is different.  Several pregnant friends have recently asked me if it’s ok to hike at altitude or climb while pregnant, my wife Sirima and I get asked this because friends have heard about our mountaineering experience climbing Mt. Rainer when she was 12 weeks pregnant.  My first comment is I’m a guy, climber, and survival expert, but that doesn't make me an expert on pregnancies at altitude…

In mountaineering a cornice is an overhanging ledge of snow on the edge of a ridge, cliff, or crest of a mountain. Cornices form by wind blowing snow over the leeward edge in successive layers. They can be very dangerous from traveling above and below them. A person or skier putting weight on top of a cornice can cause it to break off and collapse and causing a major…

Picture yourself on your first mountaineering trip with friends. You’ve spent a month’s salary on equipment, burned 3 days of vacation, and flew 5 hours to get to Mount Rainier in WA State. A quarter of the way up to base camp your sucking air, your legs are cramping, your feeling queasy, and out of steam. You don’t understand what’s wrong; you ran and went to the gym for weeks. Worst than the physical pain is the emotional frustration and feeling that your holding up the others. Now imagine…