This was it.

I only managed an hour of sleep before midnight came and I had to crawl from my tent, pitched on the ice at Camp Muir, and start strapping on my helmet and crampons for last leg of the journey to the summit of Mount Rainier. Much of the vertical distance on this monstrous stratovolcano had already been climbed – the first 5,500 feet by car and the middle stretch of 4,800 feet on foot across the Muir Snowfield. Still, 4,200 feet remained, and now I would have to face the glaciers – broad flows of slowly-moving ice that could collapse above me or disintegrate beneath my boots at any time.

At least I didn’t have to face them alone. Through the internet, I found two other souls interested in making the trek. Roped together, we stood a better chance of survival if any one of us fell into a crevasse. On average, two people died on this volcano every year from mountaineering accidents, like avalanches, falls and hypothermia. Ten thousand people attempted the climb annually, so the likelihood of my perishing on these slopes was only one in five thousand – an acceptable percentage, so long as the glaciers didn’t decide to be temperamental and shift the odds in their favor.