Mount Rainier

We did it!!!

That's right, we summited Mt. Rainier. "We" was me, Zac (his family was on the Antarctica trip), his cousins Ben, Greg, Jeff, and Paul (are you technically a cousin?). Zac, Ben, Greg, and I went on a hike last summer down the Olympic peninsula coast and the plan for Mt. Rainier was hatched then. Our summer hike is quickly becoming a tradition. We were a really good group and it was a lot of fun. Let me tell you a little about our climb...

On Tuesday night everyone met at our house (Ben, Greg, and Paul arrived in the afternoon and got to know Julie and the kids until I got home...), we repacked all the gear, and got a little sleep. The idea was to depart from my house in the morning as I was closest to Rainier. It was still a little over a 2 hour drive to where we started, Paradise. Once we registered to climb, we started up the hill.

He we are at Paradise before we started. (from left: me, Greg, Zac, Ben, Jeff, and Paul on the ground).

Our first day's goal was to hike to Camp Muir. This amounted to about 4 miles and 4,700 feet of elevation gain. The first 1.5 miles was on trails with limited amount of snow. After that it was basically snow all the way. Here are a few pictures from the day.

This is at our first rest stopping point. It was a hot afternoon, we were all overdressed for the initial climb. The view even from here were incredible.

Cramp-ons are the best!!! They make hiking on the ice possible. Only problem is when you catch one on your pants; they're sharp and cut easily.

More walking up a hill. I had a horrible 1st day. My backpack didn't fit right, and basically pulled at me, pulling me down the hill. It made for a really long climb. Zac, Ben, and Paul all had used this same model pack before and where wondering how it was comfortable for me. It wasn't. I will be buying a new one before our next trip.


We finally were getting close. Camp Muir is under the big rock outcropping on the right, called Cathedral rock.

This is looking out from camp Muir in the direction we came. That is Mount Adams in the distance.

Another picture looking out from Muir.

Here is our camp site. We had to dig a lot of snow, as our 6 person tent took up two previous tent sites. Once we got the tent up, we spend the rest of the evening melting snow for water, and boiling it for our dinners. We ate and all crawled into the tent and tried to get some sleep. I think I slept the best, but still only about 4 hours.

In the morning we woke up at about 4 am and actually headed out at about 5. We were about 4 hours behind most of the other groups, but we actually liked this as we only planned to summit and come back to Muir this day (most of the groups summit and go all the way back down on the second day) and preferred to hike in the daylight as much as possible.

After we crossed over Cathedral gap, we had to hike across the Ingram glacier. There were some pretty big (and deep) crevasses on this glacier. The trail though always took you to a place where it was easy to cross. Zac really wanted to fall in (or throw Ben in...) just so we could use some of the gear we had.

Approaching Disappointment Cleaver.

Climbing across and up the Cleaver.


Finally, we reached the top of Disappointment Clever and took a long break. This was at about 12,000 feet. We still had 1/2 the distance to the top...

This probably doesn't show up well, but towards the upper right side of the picture in the snow is two small dots. These were people coming down. This is where we had to go...

The crater!!! That's right! The top of the world (at least in Washington)! We reached the summit at about 3:30, 10.5 hours after we left camp Muir. We didn't have a lot of pictures between the top of Disappointment Cleaver and the top. It was really a long hike traversing back and forth. So much of seeing the same thing and not feeling like you were getting anywhere, that we all started to get tired and didn't want to keep going. That was the great part of having a team of friends, we all motivated each other to keep walking.

This is my Reese's peanut butter cup that Paige gave me for father's day. I brought it as my motivation. I told Paige the day before the climb that I would eat it at the top. It was good.


Mount Adams (I think) in the distant.


Another shot looking out from the summit. I really loved the views from the top. All civilization seemed to melt away, you only saw mountains, hills, and small lakes (that were close). It was absolutely beautiful!!!

Here is our summit shot!!! We don't look that tired, we were able to lift our ice axe's (from left: Greg, Jeff, Ben, me, Zac, and Paul in front).

Unfortunately Ben got a really bad migraine while on the summit and we felt it was probably worse due to the altitude, so we didn't stay up there for long. We wanted to get down a ways hoping his head would feel better. After we dropped about 1,000 feet we stopped to melt some more water for the return trip. Ben did start to feel better, not great though, so we pretty much kept walking all the way back to camp with minimal breaks.

When we reached Camp Muir again it was 9 pm. We had been hiking for 16 hours, and had climbed about 4,200 vertical feet, plus the return.

Ben climbed right into the tent and crashed. The rest of us were not far behind. We melted more snow and made dinners, nobody ate all of their's, and all basically crashed in the tent for the night. Zac and I did have a cup of hot chocolate while we were melting snow though. I think we were the only ones left not in the tent already.

The next morning we got up, packed up rather quickly and headed back to Paradise. The return trip was pretty fast. It took about 4 hours to descend all the way back down. We were able to glissade some which was great, it made the descent go quicker.

All together this was a really great trip. Completely successful for one, but also no one was seriously injured.

I think this was the hardest thing I have ever done. I had heard it compared a lot to running a marathon. Jeff had just run the Portland marathon last year, and I ran the it in 2001 and the Seattle in 2006, and we talked a lot about this. We were in complete agreement that this was much harder than a marathon. I think it was like running a marathon, sleeping for 3 hours and then running a second.

It hasn't even been a week since our climb, and I already am looking at the mountain wanting to go up again. Not for a few years, anyway, but this wasn't the last time either.

The Birthday Cakes

Last weekend was Paige's 6th birthday, she was born on the 4th of July. This was of course a happy event, but also slightly sad, she's 6!!! She is very quickly becoming a big girl, not my little girl anymore. Of course she will always be my baby girl though...


Anyway, we had a nice party for her. As you all know Paige is a little Geo-obsessed girl. I think she just really loves the outdoors and this is part of the fuel to get out. So anyway she asked for a Geocaching party, including the cake. It was fun, I bought some ammo cans and official Geocache stickers and found three good spots in the backyard to hide them. I logged the coordinates into my GPS the night before, so the kids had a real adventure. Julie filled each one with a different party favor for each of the kids. Now we will hide these for real as we find a good spot where we can easily keep track of them. We also bought trackable tags, so each kid (Paige, Jonah, and Jack) can have their own to keep track of and watch move around the world.


We bought Paige a Razor scooter, she calls it her "2-wheel scooter." There have already been several falls resulting in bloodied knees, but she loves it and is actually getting good quickly, better than Julie or I expected.


So anyway, that is Paige's birthday, it was a nice party, thanks to all who came, Paige appreciated it!!! Paige and Julie ended the evening by going to Coulon park and watching the firework show. I stayed home while the boys were sleeping, and started this post...


Okay, so the title. This is really less about Paige and her birthday and more about the cakes. As you may know (you will now, if you don't), Julie makes the most amazing cakes. She has a lot of fun doing it and it generally is what the kids look forward to most on their birthday's. Paige will talk for 6-9 months before here birthday about what cake she wants. Basically they come with an idea (or Julie does) based on what they are really into, and Julie spends a lot of time trying to figure out how to creatively put the idea on a cake. As you will see no two are the same!!! She does a great job, every one is a new favorite.


So lets so back to March of 2004. Julie and her sister Shannon were took a cake decorating class. The class was a Christmas gift from Bubba. They both had a good time and learned a lot of the cake decorating basics. These are a couple of the cakes that they made in there class. I think the brown one is Julie's.




After this class was my birthday, 28th (seems so long ago...), and Shannon made my cake. While this post is primarily about the cakes Julie has made, I really liked this one, so I had to include it. She actually used real cookies (I think the remainder of the batch was my birthday gift!!!) coming out of his mouth. I didn't know I was getting a Cookie Monster cake, and was randomly wearing the shirt on the same day.

For Paige's 1st birthday (July 2004), Julie was still into all the techniques she learned in her class and tried to make a cake but also make something for a 1 year old. Anyway, I thought this turned out really good. This cake had no sugar in it. It didn't taste that great. It was actually the only time that taste was not a factor, all other cakes had to taste good too, not just look good; a primary Julie requirement. We actually bought a star shaped pan (for our stars and stripes birthday girl) and thought we would use it every year with a different design on top, this didn't happen.

For Paige's 2nd birthday (July 2005) Paige was really into Barney (I always hated Barney!!!), so of course a Barney cake was created. I remember Julie looking at Barney movie covers and pictures on the internet, and trying to sketch out her own Barney face. I thought it turned out really good. No question what it was. See still using the star shaped pan...

Now, the first little guy came around. For Jonah's 1st birthday (March 2006), Julie made a dump truck cake, working in a mud pit. She dug out a small section of the cake and put it in the back of the truck, which created the pit on the cake. While relatively simple, this was a cool cake, and Jonah loved it. He ate the ball from the back of the truck... Jonah still plays with that dump truck too.

Next up was Paige's 3rd birthday (July 2006). She asked for a "lady bug" cake, and so a lady bug cake was made. As you can see we aren't using the star shaped pan anymore, we talked about it. I was concerned as I wanted to keep using it every year, but could you really make a star shaped lady bug?

For Jonah's 2nd birthday (March 2007), Julie made the Lego cake. She used marshmallows for the nubs. I just really thought this turned out perfect.

For Paige's 4th birthday (July 2007), Julie made the Ariel cake. She didn't like this project. We actually bought the pan and it came with directions, and the right dyes for making all the colors. But when you start making the picture on the cake, you really just look at the picture that came with it, there are no lines or anything to follow baked int the cake. I think Julie didn't like this much because she couldn't be creative, she just basically followed the directions. Regardless, Paige got what she wanted and really could you do this? I sure couldn't!

For Jonah's 3rd birthday (March 2008), Julie made what is still one of my all time favorites. This is the volcano cake!!! A picture doesn't work here, so we put in a video instead, sorry it is pretty long, but funny. No candles were necessary and the kids kept trying to blow out the volcano, it was great. Julie basically buried a glass jar into the cake and we added dry ice and water to make the eruption. We wanted to add some coloring, for lava, but also wanted to eat the cake, so the smoke is where we ended up.

Jonah's Volcano Cake from Julie Tull on Vimeo.

And now baby Jack turned 1. For his 1st birthday (May 2008), Julie made a "Jack and Jill went up the hill" cake. This was the first time I got to help on a cake, and I actually made the well; pretty good huh?

Paige wanted a fish cake next. So for her 5th birthday (July 2008), that is exactly what was made. She used little round candy disks for the scales. Once again it turned out great!!!

Anyone who knows Jonah, should have guess that a skunk cake was coming. This was Jonah's 4th birthday (March 2009). Julie used cotton candy for the spray. She would have used dry ice, but the idea was taken just the year before for the volcano. I think this was just awesome!!! Jonah was sooo excited!!!

For Jack's 2nd birthday (May 2009), Julie made a giraffe cake. I think the challenge with this was really how to make it big enough and still have it stay together. The best solution was to use the liquorice for the the legs. Another great cake!!!

Finally, for Paige's 6th birthday (July 2009) a week ago, Julie made an outdoor geocaching cake. This was really cool, and turned out unbelievable. Jonah has recently had his blood tested for allergies (He and Jack and Paige a little have had eczema issues) and it came back that he is allergic to dairy, beef, wheat, gluten, eggs, tomato's, pineapple, and I think something else. Anyway, Julie really wanted to make a cake that the kids could eat, so this one had none of the things from the list in it, with the exception of the trees and logs on the cake, which were just too difficult to make otherwise. We just didn't give these to the kids to eat. Julie also is now making coconut milk ice cream for them, which is really good. Anyway, back to the cake. For the geocaching part, Julie did a gummy worm in the cake and whoever found it was going to get a 100 grand (you know the candy bar), but she found it while cutting the cake so that didn't quite work as expected. Anyway, again another great cake.

Weren't these all just incredible? I just don't know how she keeps coming up with the different idea's of how to create what the kids want. While most are not complicated, no two are the same, and they all turn out to be exactly what the kids wanted if not something a little better. I am getting to be like the kids and the cake is the best part of the whole birthday!!! Way to go Julie!!!