\n\t\t\t\tYes!\n\t\t\t\t<\/dd><\/dl>
\n\t\t<\/div>\n\nAnd then we arrived in Seattle and I got my first peek at Mt. Rainier.\u00c2\u00a0 Oh dear.\u00c2\u00a0 It was much bigger than the staircase.\u00c2\u00a0 As we gathered at IMG, all of the other (all male) members of our group were sharing their previous climbing experiences with enthusiasm.\u00c2\u00a0 When it came my turn I noted that I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve taken a hike before\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6in Virginia\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6and smiled nervously, wondering, as everyone else likely was, what I was doing in the mountains.<\/p>\n
IMG\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s guides were amazing.\u00c2\u00a0 Despite my constant and regularly voiced concerns, the guides were perfectly calm and encouraging.\u00c2\u00a0 After 5 hours of what the guides misleadingly call \u00e2\u20ac\u0153walking\u00e2\u20ac\u009d on the first day, I asked lead-guide Aaron Mainer if now was the time when we got to glissade back down.\u00c2\u00a0 He laughed and encouraged me to consider a summit attempt before sliding down \u00e2\u20ac\u201c I gave him my best \u00e2\u20ac\u0153eh, close enough\u00e2\u20ac\u009d shrug and he just smiled and reiterated that it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s \u00e2\u20ac\u0153just walking.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d\u00c2\u00a0 Then, following in the steady footsteps of guide Peter Dale, I miraculously found myself at first camp, followed by Camp Schurman.<\/p>\n
I was never super confident that I was even going to attempt a summit.\u00c2\u00a0 Camp Schurman seemed nice enough, I thought I might stay a while.\u00c2\u00a0 But I followed every piece of advice offered by the IMG guides while at camp (eat, drink, sleep), and when Aaron woke us up in the early morning (read: 10:30pm the night before) for our summit attempt, I felt weirdly prepared.\u00c2\u00a0 So off we went \u00e2\u20ac\u201c \u00e2\u20ac\u0153just walking\u00e2\u20ac\u009d \u00e2\u20ac\u201c toward the top of this beautiful mountain.<\/p>\n
Having never seen a crevasse before, there were a few moments of intense panic (on my part) while we made our way to the top (I may have yelled \u00e2\u20ac\u0153we\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re all gonna die!\u00e2\u20ac\u009d at one point\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6we weren\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t), and I definitely claimed that I was going to turn around more than once, but to my surprise (and prompted by the steadfast confidence of our guides), I found myself safely at the summit.\u00c2\u00a0 As the picture reveals, David then pulled out a ring offering a lifetime commitment and a promise that our next vacation can involve less \u00e2\u20ac\u0153walking\u00e2\u20ac\u009d and more wine-tasting \u00e2\u20ac\u201c and while my initial response \u00e2\u20ac\u0153but I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m eating Gu!\u00e2\u20ac\u009d may seem less than romantic, it truly is thrilling to have our engagement begin with what I can only hope will be the first of many adventures together.<\/p>\n
Jennifer Cronenberg<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
July 22, 2013 I was never particularly convinced that climbing a mountain was a good idea, nor was it something I felt compelled to do.\u00c2\u00a0 When I told my boss I was leaving for a week to climb a mountain, he looked at me, puzzled, and said \u00e2\u20ac\u0153I always imagined you as more of a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10103","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-mt-rainier"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/mountainguides.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10103","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/mountainguides.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/mountainguides.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/mountainguides.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/mountainguides.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10103"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"http:\/\/mountainguides.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10103\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10110,"href":"http:\/\/mountainguides.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10103\/revisions\/10110"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/mountainguides.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10103"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/mountainguides.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10103"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/mountainguides.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10103"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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