Training for Mountaineering

2009 is going to be a packed year for me. In addition to heading out on a bike expedition in August, I’m spending the whole month of July mountaineering in the Cascades of WA. Wicked cool. My good climbing buddy Indy invited me to join his (third) attempt at a Rainier summit and I decided to integrate a two-week mountaineering guide course I’d been planning to take with the nice folks over at IWLS.

I’ve done a wee bit of mountaineering in the White Mountains of NH but only for a short trip to Mt Washington. It was a great experience and the winds were ferocious. The biggest lesson I took away from the trip was the importance of solid fitness and the ability to move quickly. Neither of which I really had. So…for this trip, I’m building in a lot of training. Alpine Ascents has a great Mountaineering Training Guide.

Training for strength, endurance, and elevation gain

The bulk of mountaineering training is in building the muscles needed for hiking & climbing uphill, and in developing the endurance needed for multi-day, high elevation pushes.

Since I’m not able to get away for extended hiking trips very often, I’ve substituted climbing the stairs in my 17-story office building to build my leg & ass muscles. I’ve fallen off the wagon a bit, but I’ve been steadily increasing the weight in my pack and doing more rounds. I’m told I’m supposed to be able to carry a 60lb pack for two weeks but that’s like half my weight, so I’m not sure how feasible that’s going to be.

I’ve also started 5:00am Crossfit workouts at my local Crossfit box in Clarendon. Good times there. If you don’t know, Crossfit combines strength training with high intensity cardio. I like the variable workout format and I’m finally learning how to do a proper squat. The vomit buckets in the corner make me nervous though. The instructor in the Foundations class for noobs, Erika, is really excellent.

Finally, I’m trying to keep up with regular visits to the climbing gym. Since I left Maryland, I haven’t been going regularly, and now my climbing skills have way fallen off. This was made highlighted on a birthday cragging trip when I could barely get up routes my buddies cruised. Until then I could pretend that my general fitness gains translated to good climbing. Not so much. I hate looking bad so it’s motivation to get back to the gym before the February Red Rocks trip.