A Dire Mount Rainier Odyssey Helps 3 Women Find Strength

PARADISE, WA — Minda Paul was looking down at the Emmons Glacier, and she didn’t like what she saw.

It was after sunrise on July 31, and Paul and her two climbing partners, Kelsey Wilmore and Yvonne Naughton, had just completed a fraught climb to the summit of Mount Rainier. The threesome were on the first leg their attempt to complete the Infinity Loop, an insane journey that involves climbing Rainier twice and running the length of the Wonderland Trail.

Wilmore was recovering from food poisoning and was weak. Add to that, Naughton and Wilmore had limited experience climbing along glaciers. The thought came to Paul: what if this was a mistake?

"It was the scariest moment of the climb because we’re thinking, ‘Oh, we've made too many mistakes, and we're in a possibly very bad situation,'" she remembers.

Things did get better, and Naughton Paul, and Wilmore eventually descended Rainier safely. But the team would encounter too many obstacles to complete their Infinity Loop attempt.

But that doesn’t mean they wasted their time. The doomed expedition, the women say, was an incredible learning and bonding experience, and sets an example for other women to attempt massive feats.

Here’s how their journey unfolded.

2 Teams In Infinity Loop

The Infinity Loop was devised by Washington-born mountaineer Chad Kellogg, who died in a 2014 climbing accident in Patagonia. He named his creation after its shape — an hourglass figure that starts and ends at the Muir steps near the Henry M. Jackson visitor center at Paradise.

After the first Rainier summit, hikers head down to the White River campground, and then run clockwise back to Paradise along the Wonderland Trail. After climbing Rainier a second time, hikers go counterclockwise from White River back to Paradise.

Mountaineers Ras Vaughan and Gavin Woody in 2016 were the first to complete the Infinity Loop. Jason Antin and Erik Sanders notched the fastest time in 2018: 2 days, 11 hours, and 21 minutes. Until this summer, no team of women had completed the loop — although in 2017 Sarah Morris and Nate Smith mounted the first mixed-gender conquest.

Naughton, who is from Ireland, is a pediatrician and mother who has run more than a dozen 100-mile ultra marathons. She’s known about the Infinity Loop for years, but decided to make it her big challenge in 2019. She wanted to smash the gender record and bring the first team of women through the journey.

Naughton asked Wilmore — a mother and graphic designer and ultra-runner — to be her teammate, but they needed a third to help guide them up Rainier. They didn't know Paul very well, but knew about her mountaineering expertise. Paul, a manager at a construction company, is a literal “super volunteer” with The Mountaineers.

The same day Naughton, Wilmore and Paul began their attempt, two other women, Kaytlyn Gerbin and Alex Borsuk, became the first all-women team to complete the Infinity Loop. The five women knew about each team’s plans.

There is some disagreement over which team had the idea to attempt the loop first. But both teams say they support each other. The trips also happened so close together in part because July typically has the best weather for Rainier summits.

One thing is clear: Both teams faced incredible challenges during their separate Infinity Loop attempts.

A Crevice Field

The team set out for the summit of Rainier on the night of July 30, a Tuesday. They began at the John Muir steps at Paradise

Not far from there, at about 9,000 feet, Wilmore started getting sick. The source was probably some bad chicken salad she grabbed on her drive to Rainier. When most people get food poisoning, they don’t leave bed. But Wilmore had her mind set on the summit of the tallest volcano in Washington.

The team stopped to rest for a few hours at Camp Muir. Wilmore was throwing up bile, Paul remembers, which means that her stomach was empty. The team proceeded slowly toward the summit, with the worst moments in the very early morning hours at Disappointment Cleaver, the main route to the crater summit of Rainier.

“I wanted to wait for the sun to come up,” Wilmore recalled recently about her high-altitude bout with food poisoning. “I knew something was going to change.”

Miraculously, Wilmore says did feel better at sunrise, and the team made the summit.

When the team reached Emmons Glacier, Paul saw that it was a “crevice field all the way down.” There were also clouds heading toward them. During the journey down, Naughton’s leg punched through an ice bridge. Then Wilmore “bonked,” when the body shuts down from lack of nutrients. The team had to stop and eat, adding more time to the trip.

"We were worried that we tried to push it too far," Naughton said.

It was after dark on July 31 when the team got to the White River campground. But worse than the delays was what they saw in the weather forecast. A nasty system was headed for Rainier, and it looked like it was there to stay.

Typically, climbers will head clockwise at White River to run a 30-mile stretch of the Wonderland Trail to get back to Paradise for the second Rainier summit. In a last bid to save the trip, the team decided to go counterclockwise along a 70-mile stretch of Wonderland, hoping the extra distance would give the weather time to clear.

But with almost no hope of the weather improving, they made plans to run the length of Wonderland Trail instead.

“It was a bummer,” Wilmore said. “We had set out to do this goal, and I’m stubborn and determined. It hurt.”

“It was a lot of wishful thinking, we kept going through the scenarios,” Naughton said, adding that she “nudged” the team to try a second Rainier summit. “We kept reminding each other this was pretty cool, that now we're doing the whole Wonderland Trail. Let's just enjoy it and be thankful for these achievements.”

More Crazy Adventures

The team finished the nearly 100-mile-long Wonderland Trail on Saturday, and then prepared to go back to their lives in Bellingham.

They all agree it would’ve been optimal to finish the whole Infinity Loop — and they’re not ruling out another attempt — but they still came away with new lessons, and new relationships.

“We spent these number of days seeing the worst of each other, and the best. We really had a great time together, and we’re excited about doing more running and climbing together,” Naughton says. “One of the big things was the idea of empowering each other through the team. It's nice to think that we all taught each other something. These are skills we can pass on.”

“You don't walk away from that and not be best friends,” Wilmore said. "The main goal was to show women it's possible to do crazy stuff like men and empower other women. And I think we achieved that within ourselves.”

“I feel it's really important to inspire people to stretch themselves to try something new, to go out and play in the Cascades, on our beautiful mountains and glaciers. And those might not be around when our kids are older,” Paul said. “There are so many other adventures we’re scheming and dreaming of.”