Rainier 2005 trip planning

In May 2005, a group of 4 of us went to Rainier in hopes of climbing the Kautz glacier route to the summit. You can read the trip report here. It was quite an adventure and a lot of planning went into getting ready for our first big mountain. This page is a collection of lists, maps, thoughts, and other things that helped us a lot with the planning process.

Planning the trip entirely as essentially beginners (we took the ECP mountaineering school) taught us a lot of lessons, some which we learned up front (getting a team together is tough when everyone leads busy busy lives), and others we learned after (you can't plan everything, and if you don't know the route well enough, you're bound to get lost).

I've included a number of attachments to this post that you can download and use as you want. These include my packing list (based heavily on one I got from my friend jake who went the previous year) and meal plan, and nice PDF maps of Rainier Park.