The Mount Rainier Of Recovery

What’s more difficult than climbing the highest peak in the land … getting sober.  I found this great video about 7 men in recovery who were planning and training for a summit of Mount Rainier in Washington.  They start the journey yesterday and are on their way up today if all is going to plan.  As you can tell from the video, making it to the base of the mountain has been the hardest part of the journey and several of the original team did not make it that far.  I am going to follow up and hope to post some pictures of the members that made it to the top this weekend or as soon as I can find them.

Mount Rainier Facts –

• Mount Rainier is Washington’s highest mountain. It is the 21st most prominent mountain in the world with an elevation rise of 13,211 feet from its nearest low point. It is the most prominent mountain in the lower 48 states (the contiguous United States).
• As an active volcano, Mount Rainier has many small high-frequency earthquakes, often occurring on a daily basis. Every month as many as five quakes are recorded near the mountain’s summit.
• Mount Rainier is the most glaciated mountain in the contiguous United States with 26 major glaciers as well as 35 square miles of glaciers and permanent snowfields.
• The first ascent of Mount Rainier was thought to be in 1852 by an undocumented party. The first know ascent was in 1870 by Hazard Stevens and P.B. Van Trump. The pair were feted in Olympia after their successful ascent.
• The great American naturalist John Muir climbed Mount Rainier in 1888. He later wrote about his climb: “The view we enjoyed from the summit could hardly be surpassed in sublimity and grandeur; but one feels far from home so high in the sky, so much so that one is inclined to guess that, apart from the acquisition of knowledge and the exhilaration of climbing, more pleasure is to be found at the foot of the mountains than on their tops. Doubly happy, however, is the man to whom lofty mountain tops are within reach, for the lights that shine there illumine all that lies below.”