Thy and I did Camp Muir on Sunday in challenging conditions. Visibility was poor with fairly persistent wind and snow. We got to about 9,200 and had to turn around since we were warned about going on unless we were prepared to spend the night at Muir, and we weren’t. We were on target for about 5 hours to get to Muir at a steady but not adventurous pace. Probably a good call since the weather started closing in just as we were getting off the mountain.
Since there was some new snow we did most of it in snow shoes, up and down. Snow was too soft for crampons to make a difference and my gators kept filling up over the top of my boots trying to posthole. I was curious about that since RMI doesn’t list snow shoes on the equipment list, from my recollection. In reading other posts, it sounds like snow pants with interior ankle gators underneath the main gators are the only way to go if you want to keep snow out of your boots confidently.
I have the Mountain Hardwear South Col backpack. I noticed that my gear was wet inside at the end of the day, especially the bottom when the pack had been sitting on the ground. I couldn’t find a reference to “waterproof” in the specs so I am going to line the inside of the pack with a garbage compactor bag next time. We did this on Baker and it worked great.
I dumped my old boots after getting soaked on St Helens. My new Zamberlans were the bomb and I used the heat moldable “Sole” insoles rather than Superfeet this time. They were great, I’m now a convert from Superfeet. I am planning to rent the premium mountaineering boots from RMI rather than buying. Although I was thinking about taking regular boots for the lower part of the mountain and the mountaineering boots for the summit, since there is snow all the way to Muir, I think I’m going to save the weight and just take the mountaineering boots all the way.
My high quality ski gloves were soaked through, so I need to rethink the glove situation now that I solved my feet issue.
I tried my hydration pack without insulation, and the drinking tube started to freeze. So I am going to need to insulate it even for the lower section, and/or have bottle backups.
Even in 25-30MPH winds, I only had on a hard shell with a windstopper soft shell and a wicking layer and was plenty warm while moving – but cooled down super fast when stopped.
We past some groups on the way down who had summited the night before, even with bad weather. One group only had 4 reach the top out of 16 though.
We are thinking about doing Camp Muir again the weekend of 6/11, probably spending the night in Ashford beforehand to get an early start without getting up at butt o’clock.
Slalom Rainier Climb 
