Home > Trip Reports > March 6, 2010, Mt. Baker Heliotrope ridge (video)

March 6, 2010, Mt. Baker Heliotrope ridge (video)

3/6/10
WA Cascades West Slopes North (Mt Baker)
5282
12
Posted by bramski on 3/7/10 1:58pm
I had originally planned on doing Vertfest this weekend, so sorry to miss out on folks that I'd told I'd be there (hopefully NWAC is enjoying the donation of my entry fee).

Scott, Dave and myself made an early morning exit from the Helio trail head (about 230am) to boot & skin our way up Grouse.  Noteably we got ourselves a bit off route and discovered what a hellacious ice fest the lower trees are and just how little snow cover there is.  Nevertheless we emerged on top of the knoll to the west of Grouse creek and skinned through fantastic powder in exceedingly easy skinning conditions.  Unfortunately Scott had to exit our party due to some knee troubles around 5700 or so.

I think we spied about 3 parties or so ahead of us, and were later in the day followed by 2-3 more.  The snowlevel on the mountain looks great, however, the Colfax serac looks suprisingly active for this time of year.  It looked like to us that there was significant icefall there in recent history with some very large blocks hanging precariously.  We booted over most of the shoulder above the bergschrund; it looks like there is a large separating block of the bergschrund that may go once things really get warm up there!  Thanks to the parties ahead of us who set up the 1300' rising skin track all the way to the summit.

We met several parties at the summit at 215pm and made our ski descent after being visited by a Military aircraft that seemed to be making laps around the summit as well as a helicopter that stopped by to say hello.  The ski down the roman wall was wet powder mixed with chunky ice, and ski conditions ventured into awesome softness once we reached the north side of Colfax.  Truly an amazing ski day.  Got great video on the helmet cam.

Pictures & Video.

http://www.vimeo.com/9988855
Wow, that looks awesome. Congrats on bagging that in such good condition.

Yo Bram, loved the video and how the tune was synced to it. It was good meeting you up top, (I was the guy in the black puffy when the A-4 was flying around). Anyhoo, I'm glad to see the snow looked excellent on that side. On the Easton we had nice cream all the way down to almost 3,000 feet. Unbelievably how consistent it was!

Pretty sure from the pics that the military aircraft is an EA-6B out of NAS Whidbey Island... A-4 is a Skyhawk, which according to Wikipedia was phased out of the USMC in '98 and the USN in '03.  From the looks of things, I should've gone back to Baker this weekend rather than taking a stab at Rainier... Well done to everyone who made the summit, looks like it was superb.

Yes, but what was up with this helicopter?

http://picasaweb.google.com/vanluvdr/MtBakerMarch62010#5446098903166827746

He didn't land on the summit, at least from what we could tell.  Nice enough to wave at us though!  I was very glad he did not drop some high paying clientel on the summit with a snowboard, that would have definitely angered the gods of skinning.

Great video!  The section with both of you skiing together is the best.

Nice work guys.  I too enjoyed the video.  I like the wide angle for that setting.  Say, what kind of helmet cam?

I used a ContourHD 1080p helm cam.  The wide angle is the 135 wide angle lens on it, great for this kind of stuff.  It definitely does the big fish distortion on anything close up.

That same helicopter was tooling around the summit of Shuksan on Sat. Rubbernecking tourists is my guess.

author=Boot link=topic=15889.msg66445#msg66445 date=1268101936]
Great video!  The section with both of you skiing together is the best.

I'll second that! The Red Hot Chili Peppers are a great audio match to video. Way to get it done Bram.

Gary

Nice job bramy...your friend "matt"...

Good one. 

Q:  What's the best place for a bamboo wand?
A:  Strapped to your pack on a bluebird day.  :D

Sick video. It is getting me all excited to go out and do some serious touring. If weather and avi conditions permit, my brother and I are planning a split-board tour up Baker in the near future. I was wondering what sort of gear you guys brought with you? Did you guys bring mountaineering boots/crampons, rope, harness, snow pickets, etc. Or is it basically just a long long skin tour all the way up to the summit? This will be our first summit attempt on Baker. We have toured up toward the Black Buttes and reached about 8000 Ft. without roping up or having any serious mountaineering gear with us before, but have never tried for the summit. Any advice would be greatly appreciated. Thanks

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march-6-2010-mt-baker-heliotrope-ridge-video
bramski
2010-03-07 21:58:05