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The talk about ?the next one? started on the second day of descending Mt. Kilimanjaro.
A general rule for mountaineering is to not make any decisions about ?the next one? until you?ve finished ?this one?. This is not based on the idea of ?you need to survive this one first?, it?s based on the fact that in the middle of ?this one?, you?re probably seriously questioning why you spent so much money on this and why this is your hobby. After all, as one of my friends points out frequently, there are lots of nice beaches that you could sit on for far less investment.
Before even going on the Kilimanjaro trip, I had been out to Seattle for work and went up the Crystal Mountain Gondola to get a better view of Mt. Rainier. I took the picture below knowing that I wanted to climb it one day, but not knowing that I?d find myself on it exactly 14 months later. Several of us had our eye on Mt. Rainier as a possible ?next one? since it offers many of the same things you experience on some of the higher peaks. Glacier travel, ice climbing, rope teams, fixed ropes, frigid temperatures, etc. Since it?s about an hour outside of Seattle, it?s very accessible and it provides a great opportunity to see if you want to invest in a bigger, and inevitably longer, trip to another cold weather high-altitude climb.
After a couple of weeks of texting and emailing, there were only two (Luther Dietrich and me) of us that were able to give Mt. Rainier a shot in 2016. So we decided on mid-May, when ...