June 14, 2011, Mt. Baker, Coleman-Deming

Summary: Last Tuesday, June 14th, Derek, Jeremy, and myself (Evan) successfully summited Mt. Baker via the Coleman-Deming route.  We left Seattle around 10pm on Monday, left the trailhead at 5:10am, summited at 2pm, and were back to the cars by 6:15pm.  After having dinner at the Beer Shrine (tasty tasty pizza), we got back to Seattle around 11pm on Tuesday.

Conditions were very good - there was snow on the road that about a mile from the trailhead that blocked access for our mountainmobile - my 1995 Honda Accord :)  But, it was a quick 20 minute walk to the trailhead.  The trail through the forest was mixed mud, dirt, and snow, and coverage is solid as soon as you pop out of the trees and onto the glacier.  The snow conditions were stable as a rock, and as hard as one too - we followed the existing bootpack until about 6900' or so, then switched to skinning.  Ski crampons could have been useful.  Crevasses were well bridged, we only had to cross a few visible sags.

The ski down was a bit rough - the Roman Wall skied great, but the snow below that had little pellets of ice and rime.  Lower down, we were in a whiteout so there was lots of side-slipping to follow our tracks back down (next time, I will wand my route).  A bit of a shame about the wands, actually, since that snow was soft enough to be fun.

The longer version, with pictures:
" team on the FA blog, and they're skiing and biking the Cascade crest this summer.  They planned to climb the CD route and ski down the Boulder Glacier, with their buddy in the truck picking them up on the other side.  We were a little slow in packing up our gear that morning, and the FA guys hit the trail maybe 10 minutes ahead of us.

At 5:10 we headed out and started walking up the road, with our skis on our packs.  There was enough snow to stop the car, and was continuous for maybe 75% of the way (with some bare patches, and a bridge that's melting out quickly).


20 minutes later we hit the trailhead and started off down the trail.  About 5 minutes in, we hit a big slide path that had obvious ski turns coming down it.  We climbed up it to see if we could find a shortcut to skinnable terrain, but decided against it and returned to following the trail.  We figured maybe we could ski back to this same gully on our way back and cut out some of the hike.  At some point during the hike, we caught up to the First Ascent folks.

Around 7am, we hit the toe of the Coleman glacier and started following the bootpack up.  From 7 till 9, we booted up glacier, until we were around 6900' in whiteout conditions.  We switched to skinning for a bit more crevasse bridging action, and continued following the path (difficult skinning in the steep parts between 7200' to 7400' - next time I'd like ski crampons).

Soon after, around 9:45, we broke through the clouds and enjoyed great views of the summit, Coleman headwall, and Colfax.


We picked our way over some well-bridged crevasses, threading the needle between some sags and other obvious but closed holes.


Skinning was a bit tough at times, with skins slipping if you went anywhere but directly up the fall line...


We also saw some substantial icefall debris coming off Colfax.


We headed up to the 9000' saddle between Colfax and the ridge between the Coleman and Deming glaciers (is that called the Roman Nose?).


From here, we did a little routefinding investigation - I thought the general route descended slightly below the ridge and around onto the climber's left side of the Deming, so we scooted below the rimed cliffs and onto the steep slopes above the open crevasses on the Deming.  We started getting an iffy feeling about being between the cliffs and crevasses, and after I got a peek at how broken the Deming is between 9000' and the Roman Wall, we decided to backtrack to the saddle and switch to boots and crampons.

After having lunch and hanging out with the First Ascent guys at the saddle (who caught up to us while we were routefinding), we proceeded to crampon our way up the ridge and along the climber's left side of the Roman Wall.  It took us around an hour 45 to get up that last 1700' vertical and we found ourselves atop the summit flats around 2pm.

(Cramponing our way up the ridge below the Roman Wall, with the mess of the Deming behind us.  Sherman Peak saying hello in the background.)


(Derek Hans and Jeremy Park topping out on the Roman Wall on Mt. Baker, with Colfax Peak and the Black Buttes behind)


After a quick dash for some windy summit photos (probably 25mph), we transitioned to skiing and scooted off the summit.  We spent less than 25 minutes up top, as we could see a new layer of clouds coming in a few thousand feet above us, and we knew the front was coming in.  One of the First Ascent guys beat us to the summit flats by about 10 minutes, but was waiting for his buddies up top. 





Skiing down from the summit was variable conditions.  The Roman Wall was good skiing - snow was soft but not slushy or sluffy, and showed no significant signs of instability.  Skiing back down the ridge to the saddle was a bit more horrendous, as the little bits of ice and rime studding the snow caused lots of ski chatter.

By the time we got back to the saddle, we were in a pretty solid whiteout, so we followed our tracks back down.  This is the point where wanding our route coming up would have been helpful - we played detective and watched for pole marks, ski tracks, and bootpack in a whiteout for quite some time, getting back down to 7000'ish around 4pm where the whiteout was a little less severe.

We took a break and soon heard some voices in the whiteout behind us.  The First Ascent team had chosen to scrap their plans of skiing down the Boulder Glacier, given the late hour, the deteriorating weather, and the unfamiliar route.  We skied out the last bit as a group, after trying to send a text message to their support truck, which was currently waiting on the wrong side of the mountain (at the foot of the Boulder Glacier).

As we skied back, we tried traverse over to the avalanche gully we had seen right at the beginning of the trip.  Of course, we wanted to avoid skiing *past* the gully, as we would probably miss the trail and end up in a fun valley bushwhack.  After some staring at the GPS and some investigation of existing ski tracks, we decided to follow existing tracks down a gully - whoops, this gully actually is over a stream, and very close to the large waterfall visible from the trail.  We skied out the gully, dodging holes and making tight turns - actually a lot of fun at the end of the day.



We eventually intersected the trail around 5pm, put skis on our packs, and hoofed it back to the trailhead and the car.  We got back to the car around 6:15, and enjoyed some salty snacks and dry clothes.  Derek had squirreled away a few beers under the snow, but unsurprisingly they were nowhere to be found :)  We'll warn him to hide them better next time.

The First Ascent support truck wasn't around (their buddy hadn't gotten our text message yet) so we gave Rex a ride to Chair 9 outside Glacier so he could make some calls.  His buddies hung out at the cars and built a quick fire while they were waiting, to help lift spirits after a long day and while sitting in a drizzle.

So, all things considered, it was a fun and successful summit, we got a few stories out of the climb, and learned a lesson about wanding.  Thanks to Jeremy and Derek for a great trip, glad we got the chance to enjoy that weather and ski Baker!