The great blue beast labored up the incline for many long miles, past unseen precipices and looming cliffs. Its riders directed the creaking hulk nearer and nearer the edge of the road, unable to see more than a few feet in the hypnotic swirling fog. "No, go straight!" urged Gary, as I nearly sent us rumbling up an unknown spur of the path to the Great Mountain. And then, as though the hand of the Alpine God did twitch and sweep aside our piddling mortal troubles (presumably the same Alpine God who delivered my forsaken rope unto me last week), the fog parted before the prow of our land-ship and we saw the sign: "STOP: Pay Fee Here".

Hm. Ok, the Alpine God surely was not in on this, but we can at least hope that the whole fog-parting thing is Your Tax Dollars At Work (tm).

Gary Yngve and I rolled into the Mowich Lake parking lot around 11pm Saturday night, intent on climbing some ice on Observation Rock the next day. I had heard that the Mounties had stopped making their weekly pilgrimage to O-Rock because of the rockfall danger at the time of day they usually made it up there (noon or later, it seems). So, Gary and I resolved to get a good alpine start so we could be on the ice in the early morning hours.

Before settling down for a good rest in the four-season Volvo, I had to try out my new stove, an aging Camping Gaz Globetrotter that I bought used from a guy on cc.com. The stove takes little (< 200g) propane/butane cartridges, and I fiddled with getting stove mated to canister until I discovered, much to my chagrin and with gas spraying everywhere, that the canister does not reseal after you pierce it. I kicked and cursed the spewing blue canister until it ceased its foul issue, then duly got water boiling in about two minutes with Gary's "modern" canister stove. Bah. At least my dinner of Tasty Bite curried mashed potatoes and grape Army Kool-Aid was yummy.

By 4.30am, we were up and making breakfast, but my cooking woes were not over. I brewed a brilliant cup of espresso with my tiny stove espresso maker, which roused Gary from his slumber, and set about brewing the second cup, this time using my coffee-cup-sized metal mug. Sure enough, the heavy mug tipped the espresso maker over, but only after it had accumulated nearly a full shot of luscious, dark liquid. Sigh.

Exploding stove, spilled coffee, oh, the horror! But somehow we pressed on. Up the trail with headlamps we marched, until I noticed my light fading and stopped to change the battery. A mere half-mile later, that second battery, too, burned away to darkness. Luckily, the sky was nearly light by now, so I stumbled on up the steepening trail to Spray Park. What misfortune awaited us in the sleeping meadows above?

Clouds flowed over the ridges into the tranquil dales as we wove our way up on a faint trail of rock and heather. Gary had been up to O-Rock several times, so he knew the lay of the land. We huffed and puffed through the chilly wind and stopped at the edge of the tiny Flett Glacier to put on crampons. We ascended several hard snow slopes up and left to the loose pumice at the base of our dirty, intimidating objective: a couple hundred feet of easy ice on the north side of O-Rock. As we roped up at the base, a few bits of ice and pumice came skittering down, and I felt bad for Gary, who would be underneath me the whole time on the ice. Thankfully, it was only 9am and the face was still in shadow.

We simulclimbed the lower-angled section of the face nearly a ropelength to a narrow crevasse, where I placed a screw and led on up half a pitch to a rock finger sticking out from the right edge of the face. While waiting for Gary to clean a screw, I noticed my bloody knuckles and decided to put on my gloves despite the warm weather. I hadn't felt a thing while climbing, but my unschooled ice tool technique had resulted in some nasty-looking wounds. My butt was frozen by the time Gary appeared, since I had unwisely set up my belay on the snow instead of the loose black pumice of the ledge. As I was belaying Gary, a chunk of volcano whizzed down and whacked me in the thigh. I was glad we were still in the shade.

The top was not too far off, so up again I led on reasonably solid, well-featured ice until the rope ran out. I was at a small sloping wave in the ice, so I pounded in the Snarg that Steve Ramsey had lent me and equalized it with my ice tools. Gary followed nicely, and after some cramped anchor-building and gear-swapping, I started up the last pitch to the top. I put in four screws in this last pitch and was thankful for Stebbi's quick-to-place Grivel 360s. Pulling over onto the flat snow slope above the ice, I yelled triumphantly and soaked up the sun. Poor Gary had to laboriously clean the Snarg to break down his anchor. No wonder no one uses pound-in/screw-out ice protection anymore. He soon joined me up top, and we repacked our technical gear and took pictures before the scramble up pumice and scree to the summit.

The views of Rainier were incredible: Willis Wall, the Carbon and North Mowich Glaciers, and Liberty, Curtis, Ptarmigan, and Sunset Ridges. We were above the clouds (8364') and could see the Stuart Range, Glacier Peak, and Mt. St. Helens. After a leisurely lunch and photos, we descended around the gendarme on the Rainier side of the Rock, where we passed a few parties headed up. There was a path down through the rock and snowfields and the going was easy. I couldn't pass up an opportunity to dry-tool on a boulder that had some nice pockets for tool placements.

We lost the trail after the last snowfield, but wound our way down past the Toilet Bowl and into the meadows until we picked up a fine track that led us back to the hikers' trail. Three more miles and two heel blisters later, we were back at the car. It had taken us exactly twelve hours roundtrip.

The north face route was a good introduction to leading longer routes on ice, and we had great conditions the whole way. Clear skies, no major injuries or mishaps, and an awesome mountain setting -- the Alpine God blessed us again.