Pretty Interesting - Rainier Stats from 2005

[giggy]

whats interesting is the downtrend - I thought that were more people getting out!

There were 8,972 registered climbers in 2005. We again see a continued trend in climber registration numbers. Over the past five years, those numbers have been steadily decreasing (table 1).

Of the 8,972 registered, 3,879 were part of a guided trip, while 5,093 climbed independently.

Independent climbers have a 44% success rate; guide services average a 60% success rate.

There were a total of 4,604 summits in 2005.


The Disappointment Cleaver remains Mount Rainier’s most popular route with over 2,049 attempts. The registration statistics for the most popular routes are as follows:
Disappointment Cleaver (DC) - 2,049
Emmons – Winthrop - 1478
Ingraham Direct - 928
Kautz Glacier and Fuhrer Finger - 276
Liberty Ridge - 94
Gibraltar Ledges - 100
Little Tahoma - 106
Tahoma Glacier - 54

 

[Mohamed Ellozy]

Link to 2005 Mountaineering Report.

 

[Woody]

Traffic on Ingraham Direct seemed a lot like a day on Lion's Head on the day we summited (June 15th). On our way up we ran into a couple of parties at Ingraham Flats and higher up we passed a party that had spent the night on the summit.
The Presidentials sure are a great place to train for these larger peaks!

 

[sleeping bear]

Interesting to read the accident reports.

 

[thuja]

whats interesting is the downtrend - I thought that were more people getting out!

The general trend on Rainier is relentlessly upward, but it does fluctuate. There are capacity constraints on the trade routes. The guide services obviously have a mandated lid on the people they can take up, and I think that the Emmons and DC routes, the standard "easy" ones, may now have permit caps on weekends. Don't know for sure.

The other possible factor, the 2004-5 winter was the driest on record, so the glaciers opened up really early last summer. Lots of gaping crevasses and bare glacial ice. That undoubtedly put a lot of people off and depressed success rates.

 

[mtnmama]

Thanks Mohamed ...very interesting.
Just might climb that big mountain next year!

 

[giggy]

The general trend on Rainier is relentlessly upward, but it does fluctuate. There are capacity constraints on the trade routes. The guide services obviously have a mandated lid on the people they can take up, and I think that the Emmons and DC routes, the standard "easy" ones, may now have permit caps on weekends. Don't know for sure.

The other possible factor, the 2004-5 winter was the driest on record, so the glaciers opened up really early last summer. Lots of gaping crevasses and bare glacial ice. That undoubtedly put a lot of people off and depressed success rates.

pretty sure the trend is going down over the last 5 years. I did it last year and I think the dry factor was good and bad - the good being you can see most/all the major crevasses and more importantly - see where not to go.

Even tho you can follow the RMI "boot path" to an extent, they re-route this alot to go around seracs, crevasses, etc.. You still have to have some basic routefinding skills to get you thru stuff where footprints go in 20 different directions. If you blindly follow the boot path it may bring you over unsafe terrain as only the RMI guides know what has been re-routed. Basically, you have to use your head. Even on the DC (rock part)- there is no trail per se -and you have to find your own way.

The bad part is last year the route was about a mile longer than normal - it traversed way over to the Emmons and then way back to the part above the ingraham glacier to end run the crevasses and there was this huge serac feild about 13,000ft that is tried to avoid but it really didn't - I know ed (who has done it 4 times) was saying the cowlitz glacier was very very low. The muir snowfeild also had some crevasses - very small ones.