July 8, 2008, NR Up / Roman Wall down, Mt Baker

Monika and I got a rather late start last night (21:30 pm) and went to the Hogsback camp at 6,000 under a beautifully clear sky.  Honkered down for a few hours of cold sleep without a bag.  Got going at 4:15 am under an ever increasingly cloudy sky.  Traversed left at around 6,500 and made decently good time.  Ran into a party of 4 that had turned around due to shitty weather.  Weather was bad all right, super happy we had some good steps to follow for a while (thank you Sky and partner).  First picture is looking up the variation to get onto the NR.  Bad visibility for a while and then it started to rain hard - nice.  Options were discussed, skiing down the full ridge was most likely out of the question.  We still felt good about the climb and we figured we could go on as long we felt comfortably safe about retreating in case conditions on the route got bad.  There were ski tracks down so we should be able to make it up, right?  We kept pushing on and climbing was easier than expected and after end running a couple of big gapers way climbers left we were on the top at 9:45.  At this time we were soaked and the wind was howling, better strap in and get down.  Uneventful ski down the Roman Wall and back to the Hogsback.  Hugged left hand side and were able to link it up to 4,800, not too shabby.  Happy we persevered through the crappy weather without feeling that we were pushing safety limits.