Buddy Meehan celebrated his 16th birthday with a Rice Krispy treat and a bottle of bubbles. He was on top of the world.

Well, almost.

Meehan, a Boy Scout with South Whidbey Troop 57, celebrated his birthday at the summit of Mount Rainier. He was part of a group of three Scouts who just finished climbing Washington’s highest peak, as well as Mount Adams and Mount Baker earlier this summer.

Alex Helpenstell and Sam Lungren also touched the top of 10,778-foot-high Mount Baker, and the trio also came close to the 12,276-foot-high peak of Mount Adams.

The three Scouts, all 16, have logged more than 250 miles on the trail over the past six years.

This summer’s adventures in the North Cascades began just after school got out with a trip to the top of Mount Baker.

It was a three-day trip, and the journey to the icy summit of the volcano began in the early morning darkness on their final day. And the weather wouldn’t cooperate.

“We woke up at two in the morning and went to the summit. When we got up there, the clouds started rolling in. You couldn’t see 10 feet in front of you,” Helpenstell said.

Then the wind picked up, and the Scouts and their fellow climbers from the troop were blasted by gusts of 60 mph or more.

“It was really, really windy,” Meehan said.

As they neared the summit, the view improved. But the wind wouldn’t quit, and the climb began to take a physical toll.

“You could see a long ways, but you couldn’t see anything except Rainier because the clouds were underneath us,” Lungren said.

“You take a step, breath in, breath out, take another step, breathe in, and breathe out,” Meehan recalled.

The conditions were even tougher when they tackled their next mountain, Mount Adams, a few weeks later.

Although Mount Adams is higher than Mount Baker, the climb was easier, the Scouts said. But the wind was more wicked.

“It was a lot more windy than Baker,” Lungren said.

“We were staggering all over the place,” Meehan said.

Lungren turned to his fellow Scout and recalled with a laugh how he was almost swept from the mountain.

“And then Buddy started to fly away. Buddy got caught in the wind,” Lungren recalled.

Helpenstell said the gusts hit 80 mph.

“You’d get a gust and it would blow you back. And you would take like six steps back and then have to fight your way back,” Helpenstell said.

With clouds starting to form around the peak and the wind refusing to die down, the group of climbers decided not to risk an assault on the peak. Instead, they stopped at Pikers Peak, the false summit.

Still, at 11,657 feet, they had climbed higher than Mount Baker.

Undaunted, a week later they set their sights on the highest volcano in the contiguous United States: Mount Rainier.

With guide Tim Clark of Clinton – who trained the group on Baker – the Scouts and fellow family members began their climb.

Besides the three Scouts, the group included Mark Helpenstell, committee chairman for the troop and Alex’ father; Alex’ brother, Josh; Scout Max Wallace and his father, Jeff Wallace, treasurer for the troop; Scout Nik Rueth and his mother, Sue Kruse, who was assistant Scout Master of the troop before moving to Bend, Ore.; Lungren’s father, Kevin Lungren; and Buddy Meehan’s father, Mike Meehan, the troop’s assistant Scout Master.

The Scouts had a simple assessment of the Mount Rainier climb.

“It was hard,” Lungren said.

“Really hard,” Meehan agreed.

“It was extremely tiring,” added Helpenstell.

“On Baker we carried everything up to a little above the snow level. Then, we set up camp and left everything there except a day back. On Rainier, we carried everything all to the top because we camped up there,” Lungren said.

“None of us figured out why yet,” Helpenstell joked. “It wasn’t a real genius idea.”

The idea for climbing Rainier came from Mark Helpenstell, who wanted to make the climb with sons Mark and Josh. The group’s guide, Clark, was a family friend who took annual trips to the top of the mountain.

But the group didn’t want to do it the typical way, which meant climbing the south side and staying at Camp Muir at 10,060 feet before getting up at midnight to sprint to the summit by 7 a.m.

“When you do it that way, you only spend about a half hour at the summit,” Meehan said.

“We saw a lot of guys come up and do that,” Lungren said. “It was almost like playing tag. You run up, tag – there’s the top – and go back down.”

Instead, the group planned to stay at the top for two nights.

It gave the group more time at the summit once they hiked to the edge of the crater and dug in for the night. During the day, they explored the steam caves on the summit and celebrated Meehan’s birthday.

The group was going to spend two nights at the summit, but decided to cut it short after some people in the group started to experience altitude sickness.

Even so, there were lighthearted moments.

Meehan’s fellow hikers surprised him with his birthday gifts of a Rice Krispy treat, and he also had a package of freeze-dried ice cream. Meehan blew bubbles from the top of the mountain.

And Kevin Lungren brought along a plastic roll-up sled.

“We sledded in the crater. That was pretty cool,” Buddy Meehan said.

They didn’t have much luck sharing the fun with the guides from Rainier Mountaineering, Inc. who would later bring other hikers to the summit.

“The biggest thing was waking up in the morning,” Helpenstell recalled.

“We woke up about sunrise. And by the time we were waking up and pouring coffee, and sitting on the snow relaxing, all the RMI guys are coming up,” he said. “They’re coming up over the ridge, just exhausted. They were just dying.”

It’s a pride thing for the mountain guides to be in the first group to summit each day. But their expressions when they saw a group already at the top, sipping coffee, were priceless.

“They race to the top. And they get up to the top and there’s a bunch of 16-year-olds, enjoying their coffee,” Helpenstell laughed.

“I sledded down to them and they wouldn’t even talk to us,” Meehan added with a chuckle.

On the trip back down, the Scouts themselves got a scare.

Meehan was walking across a snow bridge when the ice underneath him gave way and he went into a crevasse.

First Meehan sank to his waist. He looked around, then slipped down to his chest. Seconds later, he disappeared.

“He was like, ‘thup, thup, thup,’” Lungren recalled.

Meehan had only dropped a few feet beneath the snowy surface. He climbed back up and stretched out, exhausted, on the snow.

“I think I’m all good. And then all of a sudden, it just breaks from under me and I’m back in the crevasse,” Meehan said.

At the first sign of slipping, however, members of the group anchored themselves with their ice axes. They pulled Meehan back up and made their way down the mountain. Clark’s earlier crevasse training for the group paid off.

The Scouts said they were glad to get back to the civilized world.

Tired of freeze-dried vittles, they stormed into a Red Robin restaurant in Seattle.

Lungren ordered a mushroom Swiss burger. Meehan had a bacon burger. And Helpenstell, a Bonzai burger.

But when the food arrived, the meal began with a grimace. Their faces were chapped and cracked from the sun, wind and cold.

“No one could open their mouths wide enough to get the burgers in,” Lungren said.

Rainier won’t be the last mountain they conquer, the Scouts said. They’re already talking about their next climb.

“Next year, when we forget about how hard it was,” Meehan said.

The trio’s outdoor adventures aren’t over for the summer. But now, they’re looking down, not up.

The group will soon leave for a week of scuba diving at a Scout camp in the Florida keys.

“We’re not climbing until we forget about the pain,” Lungren said with a laugh.