Seattle Rainier Seattle

The Idea was thought up by Jason Connell a long time mt climber and also competitive bike racer.  The plan is to see if a group could go from Seattle on bicycle up to Paradise on Mt. Rainier.  Get off the bike and into climbing gear, go up and summit Mt. Rainier.  Then come back down and get back on the bikes and ride all the way back to Seattle in one straight push.   Upon looking at the numbers and times of it all he concluded it might just be possible to do the entire round trip adventure in as little as 24 hours.  So the challenge was born and he then recruited a couple of Apex racing team members Travis Biechele and myself.  There have been others in the planning and preparations stages of this but as it turns out the 3 of us will be the only ones attempting the entire challenge. 

The Details:

We will leave the space needle at 12 noon on July 5th and ride 108.5 miles up to the Paradise lodge.  We will then need to register for the climb and quickly go from biker to hiker mode.  During our initial ride we will be supported by a van which will have food, water, and extra wheels in case of flats or mechanical issues.  We need to get to the ranger station at the lodge no later then 6:45pm in order to register. We will have a second crew that will leave the space needle when we do but go directly up to the mountain and start climbing up to camp Muir with our climbing equipment as well.  So we will hike  quickly from paradise to Muir where the crew will have our rope, harnesses, and other equipment out and ready to go.  We come into Muir and quickly prep ourselves for the climb. We will likely be leaving camp Muir around 9pm to go for the summit.  At this time we will also be joined by fellow team member Bill Booth to complete a 4 man rope team.  The goal is to be to the summit around 1am and then turn around and get right back down to Muir where the crew will have coffee and food ready.  We finish the climb down to Paradise and go back into the cycling clothes at about 5-6am. We then have about 6 hours to get back to Seattle on the bikes. 

Visit our Facebook page to monitor our progress.

Here is a LINK to the bike route.