I don’t think a person can live in Seattle and not be taken by Mt. Rainier in some way.  Not everyone wants to climb it, but to some capacity, the mountain claims a part of you as its own.

When I first moved to Seattle in 2004 as an intern, I had never seen “large mountains on the horizon” in general, so I was excited by the prospect of this big volcano. It’s too bad winter is so damn cloudy here, though. I couldn’t see a thing! Every day, I looked where it was supposed to be when walking to work, but it never showed through. Sometimes, the sky would open up its kimono just a bit… just enough to see the base… but it was never more than a cocktease! You could just barely see it with your eyes, but it never came out in photos. Here, I’ll show you what I mean.

Haha nope!

Nice try, but nope!

Fuck!!

Then one weekend, all of us interns went on a Vegas trip, and that’s when it finally happened!

BAM! That was my first time seeing Mt. Rainier, and I’ve been mystified by it ever since.

Of course, I had no thoughts of climbing that thing. No, that’s not for us mortals. We mortals do “mortal-only hikes” like Mt. Si. But the more I talked to people on the trails, the more I realized this isn’t as unattainable as my brain was rationalizing it to be.

Eventually, at the end of a pretty awesome season of hiking, I found myself at the top of Mt. St Helens (what’s left of it), and as usual, Rainier greeted me with its smug little “I’m still taller than you” attitude, as if to say, “come on… I dare you.” But that time, something clicked inside, and I decided this had to happen in 2014.