Career Break: Preparing to Climb Mt Rainier

While on a #careerbreak , it's important to include both work toward establishing the new career desired, while also providing time to separate yourself from your prior career identity with personal time to re-energize your soul, achieve life goals that had been on hold, and build anticipation for jumping into that new role, sector, or industry.

My career break has included making progress on personal goals of mine related to backpacking the Appalachian Trail and climbing state high points around the US. The next of those goals is climbing Mount Rainier with my son Derek Redfern .

The first steps of physically preparing for climbing Mt Rainier were very important but cloaked in my passion for the AT. First, I needed to get into shape after my surgery & 12-week rehabilitation. Getting out on the trail and backpacking 230 miles of the AT was the REAL first step in prepping for Mount Rainier. I've now proven that my legs are strong, my feet are tough enough, and my back has fully recovered; but climbing straight up a glaciated mountain in rarified air, with a full backpack is very different!

Once I returned home from my backpacking trip in late July, I couldn't just lounge around waiting for August 19th to come when I'd head to Ashford, WA. Doing that would mean I'd just be back out of shape and have a miserable time trying to climb Washington's highest peak. Rainier isn't a walk in the park (well it's a national park so it kind of is), it's one of the more difficult state highpoints to climb due to the snow and glaciers above treeline, and year-round winter conditions on the summit.

Where I live in CT, the altitude is about 400' above sea level and the oxygen concentration in the air is about 20.9%, when I reach the summit of Mt Rainier the concentration will be about 11.8%. That's about 60% of the oxygen my body is used to having in each breath! So, I need to improve my body's ability to process the oxygen that I get from the air. The easiest way to do that is to spend time at altitude, for example I could go live at Breckenridge ski resort at 11,000' for a few weeks to let my body acclimatize to altitude. That's not practical for me so I need to do it in another way.

Many years ago I found a simple, inexpensive, yet effective device that enables me to acclimatize to altitude in the comfort of my living room. Back then, I used it to get ready for mountain races like the Pikes Peak Ascent. The device, a hypoxicator, enables "intermittent hypoxic training" which is an excellent way to acclimatize. The concept is based on improving my physical performance by way of adaptation to reduced oxygen. A daily session consists of an interval of several minutes breathing?hypoxic?(low oxygen) air, followed by an interval breathing normal or hyperoxic air and those intervals are repeated several times. The training or therapy is done with the hypoxicator?during waking hours, it's not one of those expensive altitude tents you sleep in. The company went out of business, but I found a hack online that enables me to recharge the CO2 absorbing canisters with generally available soda lime used for breathing apparatus in hospitals. The unit I have enables me to rebreathe the air I'm exhaling... it absorbs the carbon dioxide I expel, and I rebreathe air that has less molecules of oxygen in it. Each time I breathe while wearing it, my body extracts some of the oxygen from the air. The green canister in the stack I'm breathing through in the picture below, has the CO2 absorbing soda lime in it. The air I exhale passes through the green canister first where the CO2 is absorbed, then the air passes into the black cartridges where it is mixed with a smaller amount of fresh air from my surroundings so some of the oxygen is replenished but not all. I can control the mixture based on the number of black canisters I add on, which simply have soft and porous sponges in them to make it harder to draw in fresh air and stores the oxygen depleted air that I exhale. I can simulate oxygen levels at altitudes up to Mount Everest, but in the picture below I'm simulating the oxygen level in air at about 20,000' of altitude. At this point in my training, I've increased the simulation to 25,000' with 5 black silos. I do this for 1 hour each night for about 2 1/2 weeks before going on an excursion, and during that hour I simulate for 6 minutes, and recover for 4 minutes, then repeat 5 more times. This activity each day is enough to cause my body to respond by producing more red blood cells, and strengthening my lungs by the increased difficulty of breathing through the cylinder.

The device on my right index finger is a pulse-oximeter which allows me to monitor both my heart rate and my blood-oxygen saturation while I'm training to know how hard I'm pushing my body. As I reduce the SPO2 (blood-oxygen saturation), my heart rate goes up as it works harder to deliver the same amount of oxygen to my cells. Normally my SPO2 is 98-99% of my body's max, but during my training I'm pushing it down to as low as 55% for a few minutes repeatedly. I'm a data junkie so I record this information from every session to track my progress and training technique!

I also have to keep getting my body stronger to climb the mountain. So, I'm training daily with either a strength training routine or a cardio routine with fast-hiking, running or cycling.

Strength training is very important! We're climbing up a 14,500' mountain by way of a glacier with no nicely groomed switchbacks to ease the steepness. Our trip is 3 days long so we must each carry all our own food and gear for an overnight expedition in our backpack. We start at the trailhead in summer conditions and end up in winter conditions at the summit which means we need to have 2 sets of gear for warm and cold weather. We're climbing on a glacier for the 2nd & 3rd days so we need mountaineering gear including heavy mountaineering boots, steel cramp-ons, ice axes, helmet (ice chunks have a way of bouncing down the steep slopes), climbing harnesses (we rope together in case anyone falls into a crevasse). All in all, we'll each be carrying about 35-50 lbs of gear on our backs WHILE we climb up the mountain to base camp at about 10,000'. That sounds like a wide range of weight in the pack and it is... it depends on how much a person has invested in ultralight gear. My pack weighs in at 36 lbs. Improving our strength & stamina is very important! On Monday, Wednesday, and Friday I do a 45-minute strength routine and finish it with 30 minutes of cardio. Every day needs a little cardio right now!

On Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday and Sunday I do pure cardio routines to improve my stamina and breathing. Backpacking on the AT didn't improve my cardio. Yes, I was breathing hard on the steepest inclines I climbed, but I never got near my max heart rate (yup I also track the metrics from all my hikes, runs, & rides). I also lost a lot of my cardio fitness from 3 months of recovering after my surgery, so I know I need to keep improving. My 4 cardio exercises I choose based on how I'm feeling each of these days are: cycling about 20-25 miles, running 5-6 miles, fast-hiking 10-15 miles with a 5-mile trail run in the middle of it, or 45-50 minutes on the elliptical if I'm feeling worn down and needing a light day.

This is what a typical cycling day looks like for me . I'm getting stronger, I hadn't ridden my bike since well before my surgery so I'm rebuilding muscles I haven't used in quite a while.

This is what a typical running day looks like for me . My pace is usually about a minute per mile faster at this point in the summer, but my surgery has really impacted my lung capacity and I can feel it when running. My lung capacity is a concern for this trip!

And this is what a typical hike/run day looks like for me . I need a few more of these because they are strenuous combined running and hiking days that are great strength and cardio builders. They're also great to improve my agility and balance by running on trails filled with rocks & roots.

I'll keep this routine up until this Friday, then I'll have a rest day on Saturday the 19th while I fly to Seattle. On the 20th & 21st I'll likely do some light runs as we spend partial days on the mountain learning glacier travel skills. I've been through winter mountaineering training and been on mountains many times in brutal winter conditions, but I have never travelled on glaciers so this is new and exciting! I've never been a fan of heights, crossing crevasses on the glaciers via ladder bridges will be a real challenge. I can't wait! If I was able to jump out of perfectly good airplanes TWICE to go skydiving, I can do this as well.

That's where I am in terms of getting ready for my next excellent adventure on my career break summer! It's not all hiking this summer... I've also made considerable progress toward my new career and I'll share what I've learned & accomplished on that front in another article/blog later this week before I head out. It's going to be a VERY busy fall of career development and transition!

If you're interested in following my progress on the mountain next week, I have a new Garmin inReach satellite messenger for this trip. Access to my page is passworded so if I know you, and you DM me, I'll share the access information.