Brief report:
No summit. We reached 11,900' (just a few hundred feet below the top of the Cleaver).
Our team: Mike (mdostby), Alex (agorokhov), Murray and myself. We had been planning this trip for the past 6 months. We even practiced crevasse rescue out of a bridge in the Los Angeles area.
We hiked in on a sunny Tuesday (June 17th) to Camp Muir. However, before leaving Paradise, we knew the weather forecast was calling for poor weather in days ahead. We thought we could beat the incoming bad weather---we were wrong. We roped up and started walking away from Camp Muir at 1:40am Wednesday June 18th. Crossed the Cowlitz Glacier, up thru Cathedral Gap (we encountered some idiots dislodging all kinds of rocks from above), skirted a few crevasses thru the Ingraham Glacier and by sunrise at 11,900 feet we decided to call it quits. The combination of high winds, inclement weather, and 2 team members who felt tired prompted us to turn around at this point. We safely made it back to Camp Muir, broke camp and headed down to the Paradise parking lot. We plan to try again next summer (July 2004).
Additional info about climbing Mt. Rainier can be found here.