The first few days brought mixed weather. The group learned and practiced essential skills for climbing in the glaciated environment (cramponing techniques, self-arrest, crevasse rescue, ect.). "We were in and out of fog for the first part of the week," Mark said. "I was curious to see what the upcoming weather patterns would be and tuned into my radio to discovered that Wednesday and Thursday were definitely going to be the best days to try for the summit, so we moved our summit climb a day earlier than planned." On Wednesday the group practiced ice-climbing skills on the lower Easton glacier, then moved up the mountain and established their High Camp at 7,400 feet.

After retreating to their tents in the early evening, the climbers woke at midnight to partly cloudy skies with a few stars showing through. "We were out of camp and moving up the glacier by 1am with a little light rain. As we went up, the winds increased - by 2am they were up to 25 mph. It was hard to see because there was no moon out and it looked like conditions were deteriorating. But then at 4:30am the clouds lifted dramatically as it was just getting light and we had a clear view of the summit. We took a break at the summit crater (9800') where it was seriously windy. We bundled up and were comfortably warm so kept on going."

The group had great climbing from the crater to the summit, with excellent cramponing on hard snow at the headwall (a 35-40 degree gradient). "It was great climbing. When we reached the summit plateau the wind picked up to about 40 to 45 mph and was really blowing people around," Mark said. "We could lean over pretty far with our arms out and the wind held us up. We did a quick group hug on the summit and took a little time for photos but it was too windy to talk so we decided to head down right away."

The team's descent was uneventful and went fast. They were back at High Camp by mid-morning and were ready for a good long nap. After the siesta and a hearty lunch, Mark gave a few field lectures on alpine ecology, Leave No Trace camping/climbing techniques, and discussed mountain weather in depth using the example of the weather progression over the last few days.

On Friday, the last day of the trip, the group worked intensely on crevasse rescue before hiking out to the vans. Each climber took a turn being lowered into a crevasse and doing a single person rescue. "Everybody did amazingly well," Mark said. "I was impressed at how well they retained and applied all the details. It was a great week all in all." The group left the trailhead mid-afternoon and reached AAI's Bellingham office by 4pm in an tired but happy state of being.