“Turn Around Time” is a term in the climbing world for a pre-determined time of day when a summit attempt will be aborted. Establishing a turn around time in advance of the climb can counter the summit fever that sometimes thwarts good judgment when darkness is coming on, or storm conditions are mounting on the horizon.

Turn around time took on new meaning for me on my attempt to climb of Glacier Peak a few weeks ago. I came late to the craft of climbing, and my goals as a climber have been relatively modest - to summit the iconic volcanoes in Washington State, and a few of the classic rock peaks in the North Cascades and Olympics as well. Last summer, at age 74, I submitted Mt. Adams. That left only Glacier Peak, which I had twice tried and failed to summit, driven off the mountain by blizzard and storm.

First glimpse of the Glacier Peak summit on our approach to Marmot Pass.

So this summer I vowed to make one last attempt to summit Glacier Peak. It is a mountain that has held a special allure for me. At 10,541 feet above sea level, it stands in prominent view from my home island. Set deep in the Central Cascades, it towers above the surrounding peaks, a white-glad Goddess of a mountain. Glacier Peak also sits directly on my “circumference of home”, the circle I drew on a map with my house at its center, a circle one hundred kilometers in radius, within which I lived and explored car-free for a year in 2008. That experience became the basis for my first book The Circumference of Home. My two previous attempts to climb the mountain were with my son Alex, whose death in 2017 left me yearning to finish the job for him too.

Glacier Peak is the center piece of a half-million acre Wilderness Area that bears its name, making it the most difficult peak to access among the Cascade volcanoes. And though it is less visually imposing than Rainier, Adams or Baker - all of which I had climbed at least once - it requires two grueling days of hiking and climbing just to reach the base of the mountain. I had committed to the climb a year in advance with my friend Phil Jones, an experienced climber in his mid-forties who I knew I could trust as a climbing companion.

I also knew that my own age, at 75, constituted the single greatest risk factor on this climb, bordering on foolhardy. Consequently, Phil and I agreed beforehand that our “turn around time” would come at any point on the climb, or the approach, when either of us concluded that I had taken on too much to safely complete.

The Glacier Peak trailhead sits at just over 2,000 feet in elevation, three-plus thousand feet lower than the trailheads on either Rainier or Adams. That meant that the actual elevation gain on this climb would be comparable to or greater than either of those more visibly imposing peaks. Glacier Peak’s remoteness requires a fifteen-mile hike and six thousand feet of elevation gain just to reach the base of the mountain. The added weight of climbing gear - heavy climbing boots, harnesses, ice ax, crampons and climbing rope, made our packs much heavier than the ultra-light gear I have become accustomed to on recent backpacking trips.

The opening day of the climb up to White Pass almost put me over the edge. It was raining when we set out, and I could tell immediately that the weight of my pack was going to be a challenge. I considered turning back at Mackinaw Shelter after the first leg of the trip up the North Fork of the Sauk River, before we even hit the steep switchbacks leading up to the Cascade Crest at White Pass. That three thousand foot climb from Mackinaw to White Pass was much harder than I remembered. As I lay in our tent that night, thoroughly exhausted and cold, I came to the preliminary decision that I had already reached my turn around time. It even occurred to me that the bravest choice I could make might simply be to call it off now. I was simply asking too much of my aging body.

I slept hard that night, thrummed to sleep by the relentless drumming of a male grouse holding his ground against our alien invasion, just yards from our tent. I expected to wake up cramped and stiff from our first day’s effort, and to head back down after breakfast. Instead, I woke up surprisingly rested, and lay for a good while with the conundrum of my conclusion from the night before. True, it would be no disgrace to turn back here. I had given myself full permission to do that. But having made it this far I also wanted to push ahead. If I could tough it out for another twenty-four hours, chances were good that I could still make that summit. I knew that, either way, this would be the final “turn around time” of my climbing career. I wanted to be sure I had given it my all.

White Pass was wrapped in heavy fog and mist when we emerged from our tent. We could barely see the clump of alpine spruce trees adjacent to our tent. Even with all my layers of clothing on, I still felt chilled.

Over coffee and oatmeal we weighed our options. Today’s section of the climb would traverse a steep two-mile ridge of snowfields angling up to Marmot Pass, then drop us over into a moon-scaped glacial basin. From there we would ascend to our climber’s camp at Glacier Gap, a difficult six mile endeavor for the day that would finally bring us to the base of the mountain. At that point we would still have three-thousand vertical feet of climbing to reach the summit itself. The weather forecast was for clearing skies that evening, and full sun the next day. We would need an early start the next morning - rising by 2:00am and on the climb by 3:00, to assure hard snow for our crampons, and to dodge the heat that was due to set in later that day. The prospect of optimal conditions for the actual climb spurred our decision to keep going.

Glacier Peak from the basin below Glacier Gap

We were traveling essentially off-trail now, ascending the east flank of a steep ridge of mixed rock and snow. Feeling more at home in my body now, I settled into the steady, familiar rhythms of mountaineering, maintaining focus on each step, keenly aware of the rising level of exposure, the ready position of my ice ax, and the need to stay present and alert. Approaching Marmot Pass we got our first glimpse of Glacier Peak’s glorious summit dome, its’ beckoning presence fueling my desire to push on. I was tired but less exhausted than the night before when we arrived at Glacier Gap. Setting up our tent, we ate an early dinner, and fell into a deep, welcoming sleep at 5:30pm.

This time we woke to an astonishing display of constellations in the night sky - beacons of a starker clarity at this higher elevation. We were on the mountain by 3:00am, our crampons firmly gripping a snowpack hardened by the night’s cold. Glacier Peak is a craggy mountain, built of junky volcanic rock, mixed in equal measure with glacial ice and transient snowpack. The final three thousand feet took six hours to accomplish, pushing against the far edges of my physical endurance. We roped up to ascend the Cool Glacier, then ditched our rope to free climb the final 800 feet of steep snow couloir with only our ice axes, making our way at last to the summit dome.

Standing on that summit was a humbling moment, and a poignant one - almost certainly my final “turn around time” as a mountaineer. The view in all directions could not have been more spectacular, endless mountains upon mountains, many of them glacier-draped as well, but hanging far below us now. Phil and I lingered on the small summit dome for only a few minutes, raising virtual glasses to our success, and to Alex’s memory. Our next adversary would be the growing heat wave sliding up the mountain toward us. It had taken us longer to summit than expected, and the softening snow conditions were not going to be our friend on the descent. Rock fall and “post holing” (breaking through the crust of snow, sometimes up to the waist), were the dangers we faced now.

In the early 1960’s, the Beat poet Gary Snyder coached his fellow poet Allen Ginsberg to this same summit, where Ginsberg famously asked, “You mean there is a Senator for all of this?” I raised my virtual glass to Snyder and Ginsberg as well, longtime heroes of mine, and to the hope that there will in fact still be Senators for all of this in a political era that has declared war on the wilderness areas I spent my life fighting to protect.

Looking back on that moment, I’m grateful that I stayed with it, that Phil and I were able to pull off this climb. But the poignance of that moment is what stands out. My life will be littered with turn around times now, as I face far more endings than beginnings. I reached this particular summit almost in spite of myself, and against all good judgment. Summiting Glacier Peak was as much a matter of luck as stubborn grit. The descent was its own unexpected adventure. With twelve miles to go on the last morning, I post-holed badly, spraining my knee, and turning those miles into an ordeal at least equal to the climb itself. But I’m grateful that we made it, grateful that I took the risk, and that I didn’t turn back. It is a memory I will treasure.

Back down in climax forest. Almost home.

By any reasonable standard, I’m an old man now, though my inner sense of self still belies that fact. It is a confusing inner contradiction. Like most men entering elderhood, I’ve tried hard to stave off the truth of this reckoning, to hold its stark implications at bay. My next adventures will include a more conscious traversing of the truth of my own mortality, a more radical acceptance that my time on this earth is short now. My turn around times will be more spiritual in nature, learning to let go of the lingering fragments of a constructed self - stuck in who I used to be, and who I might wish I was still capable of being now.

Every human being lucky enough to live as long as I have, who has been as blessed as I have, must make this turn, again and again, away from who we once were, or perhaps had hoped to become. I want my turn around times to be aimed toward gratitude for its own sake now, gratitude uncoupled from performance or achievement, gratitude stripped of whatever accolades may be trailing off in my wake. That is my job now, to live bathed in such gratitude for as many days as I may have left.

Maybe that was my job all along, and it simply took me this long to figure that out..

Turn Around Time

My Book “Apprentice To The Wild” Is Launched