Day 2

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Camp Muir Bunkhouse.

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I woke up at 6:00am in order to finish packing my backpack and because of nerves.  I ate some oatmeal at the Bunkhouse cafe and then met with my team to get gear check before departure.  Our head guide would be Garrett Madison, who six weeks earlier guided to the summit of EVEREST!  I felt I was in pretty good hands.

We arrived at the Paradise parking lot around 9:30am and went over our day with our 3 guides.  The weather was unbelieveable!  It was so hot that almost everyone stripped down to either shorts or a t-shirt.  I wore my gore-tex pants and a light capilene quarter-zip shirt.  Needless to say after about an hour I had my pants rolled above my knees.  Even though we were hiking on snow and ice, it gets incredibly hot carrying your 35lb. backpack uphill for hour after hour.

Our day consisted of 5 one hour sections.  Each hour or so we would be allowed to sit down for no longer than 15 minutes so we could eat (beef jerky and trail mix) and drink (water and Gatorade).  The guides keep a VERY tight schedule and this makes the climb all the more challenging.  Unfortunately this does not allow you to enjoy the beautiful scenery all around.  By the second hour my legs were burning both from the strenous exercise and the sun.  I had to cake on the SPF 45 to make sure I wouldn't get burned any further.  By the fourth section I hit my groove and was coasting with the rest of the team up the Muir Snowfield.  At the final break on the first day of the climb we could finally see Camp Muir; it was perched over a ledge about 1000 ft. above us.  We also had wonderful views of Mt. St. Hellens and Mt. Adams.

At 3:40pm we arrived at Camp Muir and immediately unpacked our bags to claim a "good" spot in the bunkhouse.  This building is about 40 ft. by 30 ft. and squeezes in 35 people with not much room for anything else execpt two water coolers.  I could tell instantly that I would not be getting much sleep.  After unpacking we had a detailed 30 minute briefing on how the next morning would work.  At around 5:00pm we were brought some hot water to use with whatever we brought for dinner.  I had a freezed dried pesto pasta and some beef jerky.  I found it was actually not half bad.  By  7:00pm everyone was pretty much on there backs to get some rest before the midnight wake-up call.  As expected I only slept for about 30 minutes to an hour.  It was super hot in the packed bunkhouse and people got up every few minutes to use the bathroom as everyone was trying to keep hydrated in order to fight any altitude sickness.