Oct 8th, 2011, Mt Rainier-Camp Muir Attempt-9800ft

I hate to post something like this, but I'm in a bad mood now, so here goes . . .

I'm confused as to how the above report was possible, given that I was the first skier to reach Camp Muir that day at 2:30pm. No other tracks of any kind had reached the camp since the most recent snowfall, except for the footsteps of a couple on foot who began descending from near the hut just as I arrived. We had a pleasant chat for a bit.

While skinning up I did pass 3 boarders and 1 skier at about 9700 ft, starting their descent at 2:10pm. All four started downhill just seconds before I reached them, so I couldn't even say hi or chat with them. I was curious why they were sitting down and switching over at the single windiest spot on the entire Muir Snowfield (and starting down the only field of rough sastrugi on the entire Snowfield), instead of continuing on the last bit to Muir in much less wind and on perfectly smooth snow. Seemed very odd to me. Clearly from the photos and video, that was your group, and that of cornRIDE.

Sorry to say it, but 9700 ft is not Camp Muir. It took just over 20 minutes this day for me to skin the remaining vert to the huts at 10080 ft, so it's not even particularly close to Camp Muir.

Anyway, it was a beautiful day up there, and the skiing was smooth and nice other than the rough sastrugi from 9700-9500 ft. I'm glad you had a great day up there as did I, but it would be nice to be more accurate in your reports. If you turn around short of an objective, please say so (or even simply gloss over it and omit any mention as the other report by cornRIDE does). But claiming that you reached an objective when you did not in fact do so (even a trivially minor one like Camp Muir) is just not right.

And I very rarely correct people's spelling online, but this goes for both you and cornRIDE. Please, please, please, it's Mount RAINIER, not Rainer and not Ranier.

There, I'm done being obnoxious for now. Sorry for bringing a bit of TGR-type behavior to TAY. I hope we'll have a much more pleasant interaction the next time our paths cross.

Amar, thanks for the kind note! You are correct that we did not make it to Camp Muir, I believe our GPS said just over 9800 feet. Let me explain why we did not skin the extra 20 min. up to the huts. About 30-45 min before we decided to descend, we watched one set of clouds/fog roll through and cover the bottom half of the snowfield. Im sure you saw the same thing! When you where watching us changing over, we spotted another band rolling in. So we decided to not go the extra 200 vert. feet, instead we got a great run in the sun. Amar, how long did the cover last that time? Any way our objective was to go out and have some fun making turns in Oct., which we accomplished. Also this was the first time on the mountain, so I think we made a wise choice to come down with good visibility. I will make sure to be more clear and have better spelling and grammar in my future post. Thanks for making a great day even better.