Each time I looked up from my frozen boots the icy wind seared my cheeks and watered my eyes. Above me I could make out short strings of fairy lights further up the mountain that were the headlamps of the rope teams ahead. It hurt every time I breathed in, but it hurt more not to. The eerie glow of the snow illuminated the narrow route, though the moon had long since set. The crunch and squeak of the snow under my crampons told me it was well below freezing, even if the wind had not.

At the turn of each switchback I would pause for a moment and look back over my shoulder to the glow of lights in the lowlands. To the west was the bright strip of the I-5 corridor heading north into the muddle of Tacoma and Seattle. To the east were the plains of Eastern Washington and the lights of Yakima. Each cluster seemed a haven of light and warmth in the huge expanse of blackness stretching out in all directions. Directly below I could see an endless line of tiny headlamps belonging to all the teams below us. A chilled sip from my water line to keep it from freezing solid. The water had been steaming when I poured it in, but that warmth had long since dissipated. Keep going, I muttered. Keep going. Keep going. Don't lose your momentum. But it was so hard, and so slow.

Over 13,000 feet now and the air felt as thin as glass. How many hours had I been doing this? I checked the narrow glacier rope that connected me to Paul. He was a dark bundle beneath the tiny spot of his headlamp. Keep going. Watch your feet, check the line, keep going. I raised my head. Did the snow look different? Yes it did. The crusty ice that the wind had swept clean was gleaming - glowing with a strange rose color. All at once my fogged and tired brain connected the dots and I turned clumsily to look behind me. And there was Paul, clearly outlined in the first rays of the rising sun. The whole mountain was changing, blushing in the new light. And I knew right then that we would make it. We would stand on the summit of Mt. Rainier, 14,410 feet above the sea.

Three years and four failed attempts went into that summit. Certainly, I have had other memorable moments this year. I have chimneyed up the fluted sandstone walls of slot canyons buried in the wild wastes of the Escalante Plateau. I have struggled up ridges of waist deep snow, bent double under the gale-force winds. I have stared in hushed awe at the midnight stars in the midst of a desert so soundless that you could hear the beating of your own heart.

And still, when I think of the moments of this year now past, I see in my mind's eye the sudden coloring of windswept ice, the red rays of sunlight over the edge of the world as I turn to look, and the wonder and beauty of that moment - engraved on my memory and frozen in time.