Home > Trip Reports > July 11, 2010, Table Mountain

July 11, 2010, Table Mountain

7/11/10
WA Cascades West Slopes North (Mt Baker)
3018
4
Posted by Jim Oker on 7/12/10 2:27am
Why go ski smooth snow high on volcanoes when you can get to bumpy snow close the bumper instead? I'm not sure, other than that we were up for something a little more quiet and a terrain that felt a bit more intimate. We got what we sought.

We went up past Artist Point, avoiding the now-clear paved road in the lower sections. This gave us a nice view of one possible return option - coming down direcly to Bagley Lakes from the upper plateau on Table.


We watched a party of 3 ascent to the upper area of Table via the summer trail that switchbacks improbably up the cliffy ridge. We chose instead to scoot around the S/SE side of the mountain, where a descending traverse brought is quicly to just below the pass at ~5300. We did a climbing traverse from there around toward the w/n side of Table, where we got up onto the upper plateau area. We rested for a while on a nice dry rock hump and watched trippy fog form just above the snow surface and move around the plateau and enjoyed the chiaroscuro effect of the cloud/sun intervals.


Finally, we realized we all had to get to work Monday so we skied down. The top turns were bumpy down to the blue glacial pond, but things improved below there, as we found our way through a few passages between rocks, past some waterfalls, and down onto a very fun-turning pitch of snow down to the west end of the Bagley Lakes. From there it was an easy skate/glide past the lakes and creek and dawning spring of the melting meadows back to w/in a very short walk on summer trail and snow back to the bumper. Fun day, and hard to believe it's mid-July!
author=Jim Oker link=topic=17152.msg72148#msg72148 date=1278955675]
[edited to add: not sure what's up with the red x's where the images should be - I used the image tag and proper image URLs, maybe it just takes a few minutes for TAY servers to do their thing?]


You used URLs to a page that your images live on, not the images themselves. Right click the images on live.com to get the url to the image, they look like this:

http://public.bay.livefilestore.com/y1pY1VH8OnLfQ2kuUkMLiPc7N3OpLURaMmyKqSthUe6ixIhwSCy--Wz1dkuXxNgr5ZOGVMGNd2VPwt8O77cpDpLfQ/looking-over-bagley-basin.jpg

not this:
http://cid-ef12ad75bfbc8ce3.photos.live.com/self.aspx/Table%20Mountain%20July%202010/looking-over-bagley-basin.jpg

Thanks jerm - I was suckered by the handy address they provided for me along with the image data (which ended in .jpg, leading ot my confusion), rather than going my usual route of right-click to properties.

Nice post thanks Jim!

here's a few photo/video links from the venture:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/11723786@N06/sets/72157624482978036/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/jackmc/sets/72157624354919587/

wow still good coverage!  Thanks for the info; will try it out this weekend

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july-11-2010-table-mountain
Jim Oker
2010-07-12 09:27:55