April 15, 2007, Baker via coleman demming

Kevin and I had originally set out sights on snowfield peak, however the festivities friday night let to a late start on saturday (leaving Seattle at 6pm).  So, a shorter trip was chosen.  Pretty straightforward approach, much nicer than our typical north cascades fare.  Thing looked good as we went to bed saturday night, with patchy clouds and excellent stars.  We awoke to clear skies sunday morning, and started up helitrope ridge.  We quickly caught up to a group of 11 from the western washington university climbing club, and trailed another skiier to the shoulder at ~9,000 feet (I think it was tim place, but didn't realize till after we parted ways).  We then donned crampons and started up the ridge.  The snow was really wind effected and there was lots of intermittent rhime ice until we started up the roman wall.

  As we got higher, the snow got deeper - and very, very wind loaded, and a marine layer started coming in.  As we started sinking up to our knees, it became apparent that the avy hazard was pretty bad, and would only get worse near the top of the wall, so we turned around.  The WWU group went a little below our high point, and then the leader noticed a shooting crack...  Probably a good thing, 11 people booting up a wind loaded snowpack might not have ended well.

The snow down to the sholder at 9000 feet was crap - rhime, dust on crust, etc...  Below that, until around 7000 feet was boot-knee deep pow!  Hard to beat for april skiing :).

The trip down to the car was uneventful, with some heavier powder lower down.