Opportunities like this don’t come very often.  Ed is America’s premier mountaineer and one of the worlds leading mountain guides.  When Ed began to guide once again with his old employer Rainier Mountaineering Inc, (owned by close friend Peter Whittaker) myself and a group of co workers jumped at the chance.  Having successfully completed his goal of summitting all 8000 meter peaks without oxygen, Ed began to  increase his consulting business with outdoor companies.   He tests product and provides feedback and design direction.  My employer Timberland has Ed on the payroll for just this purpose. Over the past few seasons that business relationship has got very chummy between him and my boss Gary.  Last year Ed and Gary discussed the possibility of taking a dedicated team of outdoor product and sales people up the mountain.  After 6 months of discussion the trip finally had an actual date associated with it.  And a group of seriously interested people started to materialize from the many who had casually discussed it. With about two months to go, that group shrunk once again to the final group of  nine people.

At 14,400 feet Mt. Rainier is the 5th highest in the continental United States and by far the most glaciated.  It provides american mountaineers with the perfect training ground for himalayan excursions.  Ed himself learned the ropes here as a student at Washington State University.  Most of us on the trip are East coasters and being among Rainier’s deep crevasses and volcanic steam vents was pretty surreal.  The climb is difficult and it required all of us to do some sort of training.  Dealing with the thin air was going to be the biggest unknown for most of us.  I did an extensive amount of road riding and a few hours here and there on the stairmaster with a pack.  Some of our team lives in Colorado and they climbed some of the equally high rocky mountain peaks in the months before the trip. 

Rainier Mountaineering is the guide service that has been running trips up the mountain since the late 60’s.  It was started by twins Lou and Jim Whittaker.  These guys were among America’s early mountaineering legends and Rainier has been their backyard climb for decades.  Lou’s son Peter and Ed were both guides, and friends, back in the 80’s.  Ed went on to climb all over the world and Peter has guided extensively too. While Ed made a name as a world class climber, Peter focussed on building the family business and he has done a hell of a job.  RMI now has 150+ employees and guides trips all over the world.  RMI pretty much has a lock on guiding Rainier.  In addition to the actual guide service, Peter owns a small restaurant and bar (which came in handy) , a retail store for equipment, an equipment rental store, a fleet of busses and shuttles to move people up to Paradise, and lastly a facility at 10,000’ (Camp Muir) to store the technical equipment.  In addition to all of this, Peter has expanded the Whittaker name into several other companies product lines.  He has a line of RMI packs with Jansport and a series of Whittaker mountaineering knives thru Buck to name a few.

Needless to say, we were climbing with legends.  But as we found theses guys were also  a fountain of product insight that was extremely valuable to us as product people ourselves.  And the best part of all, is that both Peter and Ed were incredibly personable and fun guys that genuinely seemed to be enjoying themselves. Both on the mountain they had climbed so many times, but also with our modest group of beginners.

continue to

PART TWO: TRAINING DAY