I was leading a trip of virgin climbers (one of whom turned out to be a paranoid cell phone-aholic) in Washington and Oregon. We were climbing Hood, Baker and Ranier. The problems started early.

I ordered an SUV to carry the 4 members of the initial team, and they were out of stock, so we had to settle for a mini-van. We finally made our way out of the rental car lot ...after the phoneaholic (Mr. X) had made 4 phone calls in a 30-minute period.

As we are off to the first mountain, we had to keep stopping for Mr. X because he kept losing cell coverage. I decided that we would get a little peace, so while Mr. X made his way to the rest room I removed the battery from his phone and hid it in his jacket pocket.

He was okay for about two hours until he figured out that it was not the tower that was the problem but the power. He freaked and started to tear the car apart to find the battery; it took about twenty minutes. I never told him the truth. It was a mistake because it intensified his need to call everyone he could think of including friends from the first grade.

We finally made it to Mt. Baker. It was quickly evident that at least two of the members were not in shape for the climb. I had to slow the pace to a crawl to wait on them.

About 5.5 hours later, we arrived at base camp. The two slow pokes collapsed in a heap. I set their tent up as they complained about everything - to me and to whom ever they could reach on the phone.

I knew they would move slow, so the next morning we started at mid-night. As we left, the barometer started to change rapidly with the sun rise. It was evident that we were in for a long day.

At about nine, the storm hit full force. We had complete white-out so bad that the guy on the end of the rope could not see me on the lead. At about ten, the two weakest climbers decided not to go on any further. I staked them out with a sleeping bag, water and food.

I continued to the top with the remaining member of the team in an Alaska-type storm. As we descended to find the two other members, I fell partially into a crevasse due to the lack of visibility. We finally found the others and descended in the direction I thought the camp was located.

We could not see more than a couple of feet in front of us so seeing the camp was impossible. At this point we had been gone for approximately 16 hours. We were out of water, food and completely covered in ice from head to toe. Still no tents or sign of other people.

At that point I realized that I had marked the location of the camp on a new GPS unit that I had in my coat. As I pulled it from my coat, I fully expected us to be miles from home. After obtaining a signal we were 62 feet away from safety.

As we made our way to the camp, I only saw my Sierra Designs Tiros - not the other tent. After a closer look, there in fact was only my tent. We all climbed inside for a sleepless night. The tent rocked back and forth in winds that exceeded 60 MPH all night.

In the morning, we found what was left of the other tent as we hiked back to the car. After loading up, we headed back to Seattle to drop one of the guys at the airport because he was sick and wished to go home early.

As we hit the paved road on the way to Seattle, from out of nowhere a loud explosion rocks the car. It was the side window on the mini-van. For some reason the window had shattered. Mr. X hits the floor screaming who's shooting at me. For whatever reason, he thought someone in the back woods of Washington would want to kill him.

After a quick inspection, we taped what was left of the window. And headed to the interstate. After dumping the sick guy, we swapped the car and headed out again.

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Base Camp - a Sierra Designs tent in action!

Descending Mt. Baker after the storm

The group on Mt. Ranier