Rainier: the work before the summit

On July 2, 2016, I reached the summit of Mount Rainier. The climb followed months of practice, including a Mount Baker outing shortly before the Rainier trip. It was a guided fundraising climb: a personal challenge connected to a contribution beyond the mountain.

Looking back, the summit is the easiest part of the story to name. It has a place and a date. Preparation is harder to compress. It happens before the photograph, across the less remarkable days when an ambition has to become something you actually do.

Giving an ambition a schedule¶

A mountain makes the gap between wanting and preparing unusually clear. Being attracted to the idea of a climb does not make someone ready for it. The goal asks for repeated effort before it offers a memorable result.

That is the part of this experience I want to carry into other work. An ambitious intention needs somewhere to go: a practice session, a commitment on the calendar, a next step small enough to complete. Otherwise it can remain an appealing description of the person I hope to become.

Months of preparation also give a goal time to lose its novelty. I find that a useful test. Can I continue working when the task is familiar and the outcome is still distant? Can I accept that the ordinary repetition is part of the achievement?

The summit date records an outcome. The preparation explains why the outcome was more than a wish.

One to ten, in sets of ten¶

The practice that helped me summit all four mountains was remarkably simple: count from 1 to 10, repeat in sets of ten, then begin again.

That gave my attention something manageable to do. I could return to the count and the next step, rather than keep measuring myself against the whole mountain still ahead. The summit remained the destination; the counting gave me a way to keep moving toward it.

This is the detail I most want to preserve about persistence. A distant goal can organize months of preparation, but it may be too large to hold usefully in the middle of the effort. Counting made the immediate task small enough to repeat. That rhythm helped get me to all four summits.

A personal goal with a wider purpose¶

Fundraising gave the climb another dimension. The challenge was still personal, but it could also support work beyond my own experience. That connection matters to me: effort can develop my capacity while contributing to something other people value.

I do not think every pursuit needs a public cause to justify it. Curiosity, enjoyment, and the desire to discover what I can do are worthwhile reasons to try something difficult. In this case, a wider purpose belonged to the undertaking from the beginning.

Nor does reaching a summit establish a general virtue. One completed challenge cannot tell the whole story of a person's persistence or character. What interests me is whether the practice carries into less visible commitments, where there may be no finish line and nobody taking a picture.

The climb did not end at the summit¶

These were climbs on active, glacier-covered volcanoes. Yet in my experience, the most dangerous part was the drive home because of fatigue.

The summit makes an obvious milestone. Getting home can look like an afterthought, even though the journey still demands attention after the physical effort is over. That changes how I think about completing something difficult: the return belongs inside the plan, along with the preparation and the ascent.

The counting helped me persist. The drive home gave me a different lesson about the limits of persistence. Getting to the summit and getting home safely both belong in the definition of success.

What I want to remember¶

I want to remember Rainier as a completed adventure and a reminder about preparation. The result matters. So do the months that made it possible, the guidance involved, the counting that helped me continue, and the journey home.

Years later, I am still working on the same practical question: how do I turn something I care about into repeated action? Sometimes the answer is a large undertaking. More often it is a modest commitment that I keep long enough for it to become real.

Record note: The Rainier date and preparation are drawn from my June–July 2016 records. The counting practice, four summits, and experience of fatigue on the drive home come from my own account. The reflections were written in 2026.