SAMAYA x SPENCER HARKINS

 

 

Crazy skiers Spencer Harkins and Tashi Hackett headed to Mount Rainier to ski down the famous "Success Couloir". Braving the steep slopes and the cold, Spencer and Tashi remind us just how important it is to have the right equipment in the mountains.

 

"The week of May 7, 2024 is one of the best in recent years for Mount Rainier, a 4,392.5 m peak located in Washington State, USA. As the most prominent peak in the 48 nearest states, Mount Rainier is regularly battered by winds, but this week promises to be perfect.

 

Seeing the right weather window, Tashi Hackett and I hit the road. Tashi is a medical student and one of the strongest mountaineers I know. Although I've never been there before, Tashi has skied almost every face on Mount Rainier. He's one of the most humble people I know, but for this trip, he comes with a little too much confidence about a certain aspect of the mission.

 

For my part, I was also confident. However, I took a sleeping bag with me.

 

Our aim is to climb the South face of Mount Rainier, then ski one of the coveted North lines. With difficult access to the North Face, we'll bivouac at the base of the line, let the snow suffer another spring frost and then climb back up, finishing with perfect snow on one of the South Face lines.

 

We carefully pack our bags, taking along equipment suitable for spring skiing, glacier kits and overnight gear. Although Tashi is a brilliant and experienced mountaineer, it seems that his many hours at school have led him to listen more to adventure podcasts than to go on expeditions. So, to lighten his pack and live up to the credo of light, fast mountaineering, Tashi decides to go without a sleeping bag, relying solely on his down jacket, down pants and a sleeping bag to keep warm.

 

Hearing his logic, as I stow my 0° sleeping bag in my own pack, I end up supporting his decision. We both dream of climbing mountains far more complex and remote than Mount Rainier, but this seems the perfect place to test our equipment. Especially as the weather conditions are ideal. Although I had my reservations, in the end I don't dispute his choice.

 

For my part, I opt for more traditional equipment, packing a Samaya RADICAL3 tent, a 0° sleeping bag and an ultra-light mattress.

 

Anyway, on to the part where Tashi got cold. That day, conditions on the North Face were far from ideal, indeed very risky. Taking advantage of the exceptional weather and the presence of a tent to shelter us, we decided not to descend our planned line and opted instead to bivouac at 4,000 meters on the volcano.

 

The sun is still shining when we settle into our tent. Perched on an isolated volcano, high above the surrounding mountains, there's not a breath of wind. At this point, Tashi is still convinced he's made the right choice of equipment.

 

But then the sun sets. Tashi, still comfortable in his sleeping bag and intermediate layers, finally decides to put on his first layer. He slips on his down pants, feeling warm, and keeps his down jacket under his head, acting as a pillow.

 

Around 10 pm, Tashi wakes up and gets out of the tent to urinate. All is well with him, and he even takes a photo of the city lights he finds so pretty in the distance. Returning to the tent, he finally puts on his down jacket - it's his last layer. Lying back on his mattress, Tashi feels confident in his decision and goes back to sleep.

 

When he wakes up again, he notices that the environment is even colder, and he shakes a little. Tashi feels a little cold, so he rubs his arms, tries to ignore the sensations assailing him and goes back to sleep. But thirty minutes later, he wakes up again and realizes the gravity of the situation. It's only midnight and, despite all the layers he's brought along, Tashi is now really cold.

 

Fortunately, he realizes that he's in no danger and is just in for a terrible night. Armed with a true mountain spirit, he thinks about how to make the night less terrible. He leaves the tent and begins his first series of jumping jacks. He was sure that if he could get some blood flowing, he could warm up. Unsurprisingly, it worked. From midnight to 1 a.m., Tashi sleeps until he wakes up again from the cold. Knowing the protocol, he unzips the tent again, puts on his shoes and starts a new series of jumping jacks in front of the tent.

 

Now, as you're reading this, Tashi is beginning to realize that this cycle won't work for a whole night and that he won't sleep at all. When he wakes up again, around 2 a.m., he feels much worse. His feet are cold. So he does everything he can, does a series of jumping jacks, then goes back into the tent, puts on his gloves over his socks, even puts on his ski boots, and shivers himself to sleep for what will be only a few minutes.

 

Around 3 a.m., Tashi begins to fear for his toes. He can't feel them, can't move them and they're icy cold to the touch. Tashi's saga with the heaters begins.

 

The funny thing about this situation is that Tashi feels ashamed. He's embarrassed to be so cold, and the last thing he wants to do is wake me up or admit he has a problem. Instead of using his headlamp or snuggling up to me, snug in my sleeping bag, Tashi starts groping around the tent in the dark. Rummaging in the storage pocket of the Samaya RADICAL3, he came across a bag and thought it was my medical kit with heaters. But when he opened it, all he found were Ibuprofen, Benadryl and other medicines that were of no help to him at the time.

 

But fortunately, he knows where his own heaters are. He unzips the tent, puts on his shoes again, goes out for a few minutes of jumping jacks and finds his heaters in his rucksack. Remember that Tashi sleeps in 30-minute periods, waking up to the sound of his own teeth chattering, after an exhausting 3,000-meter climb. So he's quite delusional and always thinks it's light enough outside that he doesn't need to use his headlamp. As we've been chopping spring snow to make water all evening, his ice axe is close at hand. In no time at all, Tashi is cutting into the heater packaging with the tip of his ice axe. And sure enough, he pierces the precious heat sources.

 

Without wasting too much time or stress, Tashi peels a bit of tape off his ski pole and plugs the hole in the heater. Having little understanding of chemical reactions, he feels confident, even optimistic, that they might burn hotter and puts them to use. Tashi climbs back into his sleeping bag and tries to sleep a little longer.

 

Unfortunately for Tashi, not only did the heaters fail to produce heat, but her feet continued to lose temperature. The heaters, wrapped in tape and placed first in his socks, then in his gloves, and finally in his ski boots, cut off his circulation.

 

Finally, Tashi accepts that he's not as resilient as his idol Mark Twight and that he really must ask for help. Too embarrassed to admit his mistakes, he hesitates to wake me up. He waits another 30 minutes, approaching frostbite, before I wake up to urinate. Only then does Tashi dare to ask for my warmers.

 

Fortunately, he's more cautious about unpacking them, and although it's not comfortable and he hasn't slept much, my heaters get Tashi through the rest of the night without too much trouble.

 

Despite the lack of training and a diet worthy of an unsupervised thirteen-year-old American, Tashi is still stronger than me in the mountains. I'll never forget the look on his face that morning at six o'clock, when our alarm went off and we had to get up. We have to climb back to the summit, then descend a 3,000-metre line. We have a big day ahead of us. Tashi still says he's never felt so bad. You can see it on his face.

 

Finally, after some food and caffeine, Tashi starts to feel better, almost halfway down our ski run. We ski the "Success Couloir" in near-perfect conditions, eat a hot pizza, and immediately begin planning our next adventure. Everything's back to normal. But Tashi draws a lesson from this experience that he wants to share, so I'm going to pass it on to you exactly as he said it:

 

"One important point I learned from that icy night is that if you're in trouble, it's important to ask your partners for help. At the time, I thought I deserved to suffer the consequences of my decisions in order to learn, but the reality is that no lesson is worth the risk of potentially putting yourself at risk, especially if it compromises the safety of the team."

 

So thank you, Tashi, for this entertainment and reflection."