We woke up at 1130pm Wednesday night to prepare for our Thursday summiting attempt. I slept with my harness and boots on, fully dressed :P. We started off at around 12am Thursday, walking across the top of Cowlitz Glacier and climbed Cathedral Gap (a rocky part). The sky was absolutely stunning to look at. It was perfectly dark, filled with stars, unsullied by city lights that we normally see from ground level. Never in my life, have I beheld so many stars in the sky before (this tells you how much camping I have done in my life - zilch!). After ascending Cathedral Gap, we took a 10minute break and continued traversing the top Ingraham Glacier, slogging through the snow with our cramp-oned shoes. We reached Disappointment Cleaver, another rocky part of the climb and climbed in the dark. I could not see how far and how high we were, which was just as well, as I would probably be scared to see how far we were going to fall if we slipped. We ascended Disappointment Cleaver, and that was between 11000-12000ft. Disappointment Cleaver ended roughly at 12000ft and that was the start of the 40-45% climb in the snows of Emmons Glacier. The path zigs and zags, occasionally we had to jump over narrow crevasses. Near the top, at around 14000ft, there was a ladder with two wooden planks straddling a 4-5 foot crevasse. I had to compose myself for this attempt, as I am a little afraid of heights. After a minute of mentally preparing myself, and encouragement by others to just walk across and NOT LOOK DOWN, I made the attempt. I took one big step with my right leg onto the right wooden plank and quickly propelled myself across with a big step of my left foot to land on the other side of the crevasse and I was across! Phew...

From that point onwards, it's just more slogging through the snow encumbered path at 45degrees , swinging the ice axe into the snow to balance and pull myself along with my arms instead of just relying on my legs, and about an hour and a half later, we reached the edge of the south crater of the summit.

Reaching the summit, the wind was hard and biting cold, blowing snow into our faces like a thousand bee stings. Had to quickly put on my sunglasses and face mask. From our end of the crater to the tallest end, was about a quarter mile. That took another 25minutes to walk. By the time we reached the real summit, we were all numb from the exhaustion and cold. We quickly took a few pictures (I had enough time to even take a piss on the summit LOL) and then started our descent.

The entire summiting attempt took 16hrs, 9hrs up and 7hrs down. I felt like I was going to die of exhaustion and dehydration (water ran out early on the way down, got some water from Tom and then later had to grab handfuls of snow to chew on to get water).

While ascending, the brain's functions slow down due to the lower concentration of oxygen, you only look at the next 2-3feet in front of you, all you can think of is just to take the next step to keep going. Each step takes a massive effort, your breathing comes in quick and short bursts. That is why there are very few pictures of the ascent, I was too tired to even take out my camera to snap a few shots (plus the fact that the first 5hrs of the ascent was in total darkness - from 12am to 5am).

During the descent, there was one harrowing incident where I slipped off the snow trail into a 30degree snow slope that leads to a gaping crevasse 300ft away. Luckily I was able to perform a "self arrest" move where I plunged my ice axe into the snow to stop the slide.

I ran out of water and had to fill my backpack water bladder with snow to make my own water. To melt it, I put the bladder onto some rocks (rocks were warm because they absorb heat from the sun). Descending was also difficult because the first half of the ascent was done in total darkness (we only had headlamps on) so it was hard to recognize which route we took to get up.

Later, I was too tired to even bother putting snow into my water bladder, I just grabbed handfuls of snow and stuffed it into my mouth to hydrate myself. I was so exhausted from this that putting on cramp-on onto my boots seemed like a huge effort. Definitely no fun...

One more hazard is that as the day wears on, the snow will melt and this causes instability in the snowy slopes, resulting in rock falls and avalanches. You definitely want to be down at base camp as early as you can. We were pretty late, to arrive at base camp at around 4pm. We were hearing rockfalls around us while on the last legs of our descent.

Was thankful to finally make it back to base camp in one piece...skipped dinner, slept the whole night