Home > Trip Reports > April 7, 2012, Mt. Baker, full moon

April 7, 2012, Mt. Baker, full moon

4/7/12
WA Cascades West Slopes North (Mt Baker)
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Posted by lrudholm on 4/7/12 8:48am
Slogged up the well covered glacier creek road starting from just below 2,000 ft at 10:00 p.m. Coverage in the trees at the actual heliotrope trail head was pretty amazing. We accessed heliotrope ridge via grouse creek just as the clouds cleared off. Magical full moon glacier, mountain and city views. The moon even lit up the puget sound.

Decided to not summit since we wanted to ski dry powder underneath the full moon. 4-6" of powder with almost no wind effect. The temp low for the night was around 8 degrees so it may have dried the snow even further. Watching Spencer drop into grouse creek drainage with surprising rooster tails was pretty rad. Skiing it was even better. 

The Coleman Headwall was covered in shadow until day break. It looked so smooth from the road on the way down. Gorgeous line. Maybe the other parties on the way in were heading that way. ;)

No big avalanche down grouse creek yet.

Maybe Spencer will share his photos and thank you Alecapone for the idea.
nice work getting up there .. a full moon ski sounds awesome

so cool! some of my best memories from this year were on the coleman glacier in october under a full moon. Sounds like you had even better conditions though.

That was my idea?

An early spring day on Baker was your idea, and a good one! Or maybe you meant the full moon thing?

Photos please Spencer!

Yeah I meant the full moon thing. Also all the surprise creek adventures this year made the approach up the road easier.

Couple days late but here are a few photos. Great night with some awesome snow!


Midnight Moonlight


Melting some snow.


The moon over Bellingham and the bay.

We three (CLo, Jay and I) were heading up around 5am and ran into you two descending on the road. Thanks for the skin track (and for possibly waking us up on that ~4 mile road slog). Great moon shots!

The day was beautiful and perfect for a venture into new-to-us terrain. We made it up to our high point on Heliotrope at ~7300' just after noon. We had a day trip to the summit in mind but were tracking too slow.

For the educational part of the day we built a z pulley, pushed CLo over the edge and played around with it for a while.

We finished with a couple ~2000' laps off Heliotrope into Grouse Creek drainage. Great turns were had in pretty decent, unconsolidated snow.

The moon light and predawn quiet was really something. I bet your full moon tour was incredible. I was happy with our early start, avoiding the snowmos on the road in the AM.  On the other hand we could have made it up top if we had a couple motor head friends to jump start the day.

Here are some pics:






more shots in this flickr set if you are interested

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april-7-2012-mt-baker-full-moon
lrudholm
2012-04-07 15:48:19