the north side of Mount Baker, as seen from the Coleman Glacier
Since our previous attempt in 2003, Elain and I had been wanting to make another attempt on the North Ridge of Mount Baker. Friday's forecast for the weekend looked quite promising, with stable high pressure and high freezing levels on both Saturday and Sunday. We drove to the trailhead early on Saturday, and were able to get to the 7-mile mark before being stopped by the snow line. We parked the Jeep alongside the road and assembled our gear. By 8:30 AM we were walking up the snow-covered road toward the trailhead. We followed a well-defined bootpack for the first couple of miles, and then linked snow-filled gullies and traverses through the forest until we hit treeline. Snowshoes were not needed for the approach. We reached the Hogsback at 11:30 AM. It was warm and mostly sunny, just a few clouds. The snow was perfect for step-kicking, so we left our snowshoes at the Hogsback. After a short break, we started trudging up the Coleman Glacier.
Routefinding on the Coleman was very straightforward, with no crevasses blocking our path for the first 1600'. Our path went approximately toward the Coleman Headwall, threading between a medium-sized icefall on the right, and a small icefall on the left. At about 7200', I absentmindedly pressed my ski pole into the snow in front of me. Suddenly a three-foot gap of thin snow crust gave way in front of me, revealing that my toes were right on the edge of an 80-foot deep crevasse. We switched gears from casually ambling up the glacier, to carefully probing the snow for each step. After a couple more crevasse crossings, we reached a gentle snow slope at 7300'. No sooner had we set down our packs when the wind picked up, and clouds started rolling in. We dug a platform 6' deep into the snow slope, which provided a sizable wind-break against the expected southerly and westerly winds. The new MSR Simmerlite stove worked incredibly fast, and Elain had all of the snow melted and dinner ready before I even had the tent pitched. We studied the map and the route description, and were resting by 6:30 PM.
During the night, the tent was buffeted a bit by the wind, and peppered with periodic downpours. When the alarm went off at 3 AM, I peeked out of the tent, and shook my head. Less than 30m visibility above our camp, and dark storm clouds to the north, with wind gusting to 20 knots. Not even close to ideal weather for a summit attempt. We decided to sleep another hour to see if the weather improved. At 4 AM, the weather was the same. The barometer showed falling pressure overnight. We decided to sleep some more, and hopefully make a summit attempt via the Coleman-Deming after first light. At 6 AM, it was pouring rain and the camp was pretty well fogged in. We decided to go home. We packed up the tent and started our descent. The warm temperatures had meant the night's precipitation had fallen as rain, so our tracks were still quite visible. We followed our tracks back to the Hogsback, where we chatted with a group of climbers who had bivied below Heliotrope Ridge at 7000'. Elain set a fast pace on the hike out, and we reached the car by 9:30 AM.
Things we learned:
Gear we used:
the north side of Mount Baker, as seen from the Coleman Glacier
Elain, on the Coleman Glacier
Our bivy site on the Coleman Glacier