Zoom

14 miles of hiking • 8000' elevation gain • 2 nights

I took a three day skills course with a buddy on Mount Baker, on what turned out to be a great weather weekend. Our group made two camps, the first under the trees at around 4500', which was nice because it had a vault toilet and we could get out of the sun. The second night was at 6000' on the Coleman glacier.

All three days were quite busy with little downtime, as we were constantly traversing, climbing, practicing our steps, knot tying, belaying, shoveling snow, making meals, setting something up, or tearing something down. This was the most condensed course of knowledge that has ever knocked me aside the head.

The morning of the third day was our summit attempt. The forecast had been showing all week that there was a chance of lightning storms in the area Monday morning, so I was a bit nervous that this wasn't going to happen. On a few hours of sleep, we woke at 1 and got going by 2am, where almost immediately we had a front row seat to a rather large lightning show to the north. Our guide was convinced that the weather was going to stay up there and away from the mountain, so we continued on.

By our second break (two hours later) the lightning storm was still hanging around to the north, but it seemed to be sweeping east. I asked one of the guides if he thought that it might drift south as it swept across and he felt that we were fine. During the break I overheard the two guides chatting, and while I didn't hear everything, I gleaned choice quotes like, "all weather forecasters are fools," and "Plan B is we'll ditch the equipment and run down the mountain."

This certainly didn't help my nerves, as there's no quick way to escape lightning when you're already above 8500', and "running" down a crevassed glacier seemed just as foolhardy as climbing a mountain in a lightning storm in the first place. Anyway, fortune smiled upon us and Plan B wasn't necessary. By the time we hit the 9000' col ("The Football Field"), it started to get light and of course my camera broke. I resorted to cellphone photos, but it was terribly disappointing. We hung a left (east) up the ridge, moved quickly across some sketchy spots of ice, and continued to the Roman Wall.

This last section is comparable to Piker's Peak on Mount Adams but maybe a bit shorter and steeper; 1600' high with a 40° slope and nice, firm snow. We topped out, traversed across to the east summit, ran into another party and enjoyed the views. Overall, an incredibly hard, yet fun weekend in the North Cascades.

Comments

Shane and Kyle Meyer heart this trip.

Kyle Meyer
July 11, 2012

That is so amazing. Nice work man.

jon
July 12, 2012

Thanks! You've now got me all excited for Mt. Adams Round 2.