Summiting Mount Rainer with my 15-year-old son - Emmons Glacier Route

After a spring full of training hikes and a 12-day backpacking trip at Philmont Scout Ranch at 8,000-12,000 ft elevation, I thought Andrew would be in a good enough shape to join an already planned Mt Rainier summit attempt, so I invited him to come up to basecamp and the summit if he felt up to it.
The trek up to Camp Schurman is 6 miles and 5000 ft, with a 2k chunk of the latter half almost straight up on the Inter Glacier. Andrew did fine on that part, although we did discover that the boots he was planning to wear were a little too small, so we switched, and he ended up wearing my snowboard boots. With how well he climbed that part, we decided that he'd join us on the summit attempt.
Snow conditions on the route were pretty soft with minimal refreeze so everyone recommended starting really early. We finished up dinner and melting water around 7pm, set our alarms for 10pm and tried to get some sleep. With the wind, noise of other campers around us, and the still present light, the best we got was a light doze.
We headed off from camp at around 10:50 pm, and here's where things went south. Andrew started feeling significantly worse, with shortness of breath and nausea. I was pretty worried at this stage that we would have to turn around or split into two groups, but we took some breaks and kept going up at a slower speed.
A couple of other groups had passes us at this point, and then they slowed way down and ended up doing some kind of running belay (I was at the tail end) so we ended up stopping a lot, especially through the more complex terrain at 11,400 ft with the big plug crevasse crossing. After that we ended up on the wrong route (too far climbers right after the plug instead of straight up), which slowed the whole thing down even more. We put on more layers as the wind was picking up so things got cold. Using a phone to check our position was also really hard with gloves on.
The benefit of slower groups ahead was that it kept our pace low and altitude symptoms minimal. Eventually we reached the more established parts of the route that zigzagged up the face before doing the long traverse climbers right to Liberty Ridge, which is where sunrise caught up to us.
Eventually we made it up to the flatter area, but then made the mistake of following another crew into the snow climbers left. After going through the broken snow and ice for a while, we veered back to the right, and once we were on the gravel, took our crampons and rope off for what we thought was the final push. Top of the gravel was still a false summit and we had to cross another ice field to get to the real thing.
The way down was much easier, although Andrew did take a slide down the scree field. We roped up back on the snow and followed our GPS track back to the traverse. Plug crossing didn't look too bad so we crossed without setting up a belay. The snow got softer and more annoying lower down, and the descent down to camp felt like forever, but eventually we made it back, took a nap, packed up and headed out.
We roped up on the glacier from camp and glad we did cause Glen ended up punching through to his hips on that section. Climb back up to the ridge was crappy again, and I took a rock to the face.
From the ridge, we glissaded most of the way down the Inter Glacier, then got some water, switched back to trail runners and hiked out.
00:27 Leaving White River Campground
00:41 Glacier Basin Camp
01:00 Bears
02:00 Inter Glacier
02:36 Lunch
02:59 Camp Curtis Ridge
04:34 Camp Schurman
05:10 Starting off at 10:30pm
05:51 Crossing the plug
08:01 First light
08:39 Break at the flats
08:55 Top of dirt hill
09:36 On the summit
10:22 Heading down
10:53 Crossing plug again
11:53 Leaving camp
12:43 Glissade down the Inter Glacier

[@dankerns171]

Dad you will always remember this trip. Great content 👌

[@jacinthraie]

He's lucky, props to you both!