I met Doug in East Vancouver at Fisher's Landing Transit Center on Friday afternoon.
This was my first time inside Mt. Rainer National Park, and I was excited. We got to Mt. Rainer National Park and entered Cougar campground. Russel had already arrived and secured our site. Russel was an experience caver, and he told us about his adventures. The rest of our group arrived about an hour after us, Ben, Doug Yap, and Alex.
We woke up a 5:30 and I ate breakfast and broke camp. We left the campground at 6:30 and made our way to Reflection Lake which is by Paradise. There were mosquitoes at Reflection Lake, and I got bitten up a bit.
We left to the Pinnacle Peak Trail, and was an easy hike up to Plummer Peak.
Then back to our packs and up to Pinnacle Peak. The rock was chossy, so I did a good job of making sure I didn't dislodge any rocks. There was a short rock climb up to the top of Pinnacle Peak. We hung out on the summit and planned our next move. We decided to take a little bit of a short cut across some scree and a short rock climb up to the saddle of Castle.
We then climbing Castle which was the most difficult of the three peaks. I was second to last, the was one piece of protection to clip though and on difficult move at the top. Russel hurt his knee so he was not able to make it up Castle. So I was the fist one to down climb, which was the hardest part of the whole day.
We later glisseded down a snow field using trekking poles as breaks. I was bit tired and I fell on a slick part on the way back to our cars.
