“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 had climbed a few peaks in my younger years, including Mt. Rainier. But several decades as a commercial fisherman and sea kayaking guide in Alaska had taken climbing off my radar screen. Then, in my mid-’50’s, I joined a group of climbers on the Ptarmigan Traverse, a technically challenging, week-long high traverse through the heart of the North Cascades, pioneered by Fred Becky, that re-ignited my love affair with the mountains of home. I resolved to lean back into climbing while I still could, and to summit the five iconic volcanoes in Washington State, along with a few classic rock peaks in the North Cascades and Olympics as well. Last summer, at age seventy-four, I finally submitted Mt. Adams. That left only Glacier Peak, which I had twice tried and failed to climb, driven off the mountain by blizzard and storm.

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

This summer I aimed to make one last attempt to climb 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 island home, an unfinished adventure that still called to me. 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, 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 that the two of us had hoped to accomplish together.

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 had attempted the mountain with before, and who I knew I could trust as a seasoned climbing companion.

I also knew that my own age, now seventy-five, constituted the single greatest risk factor on this climb, bordering on foolhardy. Finding the sweet spot between realistic possibility and my own physical limits was going to be a big part of the equation on this climb. 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 on the North Fork of the Sauk River 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 is the second factor that sets it apart, requiring 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 the going that much tougher.

The opening day of the climb up to White Pass on the Cascade Crest 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 serious challenge. I considered turning back at Mackinaw Shelter after the first leg of the trip, before we even hit the steep switchbacks leading up to 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 was a humbling moment of reckoning. Could it be that the bravest choice I could make might simply be to call off the climb now?

I slept hard that night, thrummed to sleep by the relentless drumming of a male grouse holding his ground against our alien invasion, a dozen yards from our tent. I expected to feel slammed in the morning, wracked with stiffness, and more than ready to turn back. Instead, I woke feeling surprisingly rested. I lay for a good while contemplating 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 knowing this would likely be the final “turn around time” of my climbing career, I wanted to be sure also that I had given it my all. If I could tough it out for another twenty-four hours, chances were good that I would be standing on the summit by this time tomorrow morning.

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 just adjacent to our camp site. A cold wind was funneling clouds through the pass, and 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, if we continued on, would traverse a steep two-mile slope of snowfields angling gradually up toward Marmot Pass, then drop us over into a moon-scaped glacial basin on the west side of the ridge. From there we would ascend another two miles of heavy snow and boulder field to the high climber’s camp at Glacier Gap. At that point, leaving us still with three-thousand vertical feet of climbing to reach the summit itself. The weather forecast called for clearing skies that evening, and rising temperatures the following 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. The prospect of optimal conditions for the actual climb itself spurred my decision to keep going.

Glacier Peak from the basin below Glacier Gap

We were traveling essentially off-trail now, increasing on snow, ascending the east flank of a steep mountain ridge. Feeling more comfortable in my body now, I settled into the familiar rhythms of mountaineering, maintaining focus on each step, keenly aware of the rising level of exposure, and the need to stay present and alert. Approaching Marmot Pass we got our first glimpse of Glacier Peak’s glorious summit dome, beckoning us onward. I was tired but less exhausted that night when we arrived at Glacier Gap. Setting up our tent, we ate an early dinner, and hit the sack at 5:30pm to gather as much sleep as we could before our early start.

This time we woke to an astonishing display of constellations in the night sky - beacons from a starker heaven in the clarity of a thinning atmosphere. We were on the mountain by 3:00 am, our crampons firmly gripping a snowpack hardened by the night’s cold. Moving slowly but steadily between transient snowpack, glacial ice, and ridges of volcanic rock, the final three thousand feet took six hours to accomplish, pushing again the far edges of my physical endurance. Taking no chances, 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 the summit was a humbling moment, and a poignant one, the “peak experience” I had hoped for, and the one that had eluded me the longest. This was a turn around time I could be proud of. 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. 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.

I told Phil the story of the Beat poet Gary Snyder, an avid climber himself, who in the early 1960’s coached his fellow poet Allen Ginsberg to this same summit. Overwhelmed by the view, Ginsberg had 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.

Remembering how close I came to aborting the climb early, I’m grateful that I stayed with it, that with Phil’s encouragement and my own stubborn determination I did manage to reach that summit. I’m grateful that my body let me do this, grateful that I took the risk, grateful now that I didn’t turn back.

Back down in climax forest. Almost home.

By any reasonable standard, I am an old man now, though it is still hard for me to utter those words. 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. The next mountain I have to climb is my own impending mortality. The time I have left on this earth is short.

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 and achievement, gratitude stripped of whatever accolades may be trailing off in my wake. That is my job now, to live bathed in 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