Home > Trip Reports > January 25, 2014, Heliotrope Ridge

January 25, 2014, Heliotrope Ridge

1/25/14
WA Cascades West Slopes North (Mt Baker)
6259
5
Posted by thatoneguydave on 1/26/14 2:28am
I've been wondering why I haven't seen a lot of trip reports lately for the Baker area and now I know why.  It's horrendous out there. 

Myself and two others were going to attempt to summit Baker this weekend via the Coleman Deming Route, but didn't make it past Heliotrope ridge.  We took the winter route, which is more like some snow patches in the woods until you get out onto Grouse Creek.  At Grouse Creek we had to put on crampons, not ski crampons, but boot crampons because you can't really skin on sheer ice apparently.  We ran into a group of four who were coming back from the base of the ridge who had aborted their attempt.  They let us know it was shit and not worth the time and effort.  We took note of it, but thought we would continue on and maybe just turn the trip into a fun overnighter and enjoy the stars and chill since we were already out.

Following the decision to carry on we booted up one of the gullies to hopefully gain a ridge and setup camp.  After toe pointing a 1000ft we gained a ridge where we realized we couldn't dig out a tent platform, anything you placed on the snow...errr ice...slid down the mountain (if you find trail mix, caribou sausage, and a bunch of other goodies all about the base it's because a food bag exploded while trying to stab it with a ski pole.  It was quite the sight to see an entire bag of food explode and accelerate down this bobsled run.), and we realized it was not going to be safe to pitch a tent on this shit.  We had images of a tent with three people on slipping down the hill. 

Let the side slipping begin.  This was the most horrendous ice i've ever side slipped.  It was a white knuckling and diamond puckering experience.  You literally could hardly find any edge at all on this crap.  I wish I had an edge sharpener in my pocket at the time.  Any fall would result in a 1000 ft plus of uncontrolled sliding at very incredibly fast speeds.  After spending a half hour or more of side slipping we finally got to a point to get our crampons back on and boot out.  Even transitioning on the smallest degree of slopes was challenging because everything would just take off if not staked down or looped on a tree.

To say the least our best turns were on the road on the way out and we were mentally and physically beat. 

You can get to 1.5 miles from the TH with only one small carry right now.  The ice is about 3 inches thick  on the ridge and in the valley and would tell anyone to just avoid it for now.  It will be interesting to see how the new snow bonds to this....whenever that is.
That sounds rough. I wonder how the south side would be. Maybe ok as long as you ski down when its corn vs an ice sheet?

I think anything south facing and getting a lot of solar radiation are the only viable options right now..nisqually chutes.  In the case of Heliotrope ridge (not an expert at weather and such), but we thought that maybe the warm air currently in the area is slowly melting the snow during the day and then freezing during the evening.  Especially on north facing slopes.  Repeating this process everyday creating essentially a sheet of ice with nothing to grab an edge on.  Just a smooth sheet of ice.

We made it up to about 9k feet on Saturday after bailing on Shuksan via WS the night before. Turned around due to time (we slept in...oops). Good styrafoam snow above the usual bench where everyone camps and skinning wasn't terrible with the ski pons on. Found a few pockets of wind deposit on the upper Coleman which made for about 5 nice turns; the rest of the descent was on some pretty amazing shine pow.

The saying of the day was "I bet Index is really nice right now...". Still, it was a nice day out for some exercise at least.

author=Radar link=topic=30505.msg127705#msg127705 date=1390846210]
The saying of the day was "I bet Index is really nice right now...". Still, it was a nice day out for some exercise at least.


Squamish was really nice on Saturday. :D
The rock was warm in the sun, climbing was comfortable in long sleeves as was belaying but it was a bit crowded.  The only downside was the sun setting at 445.

Index was amazing on Saturday.  T-shirts and bone dry rock!  :D

On a more somber note there was serious (but not fatal) accident on the north side of Baker Saturday near the Hogsback.  A long uncontrolled slide on ice was what I heard.

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january-25-2014-heliotrope-ridge
thatoneguydave
2014-01-26 10:28:06