July 28, 2007,Heliotrope Ridge,Mt.Baker

Tim Place helped put together a weekend of Baker area skiing for the benefit an out of state visiter, Charlie Ziskin. Charlie is well known on several skiing forums.

  Being a fair weather outdoorsman, I opted to join the group on Saturday and skip the forecasted precip on Sunday. My son and I met Tim, Charlie, Steve and a young fellow from Wisconsin at the Mt.Baker trail head under blue skies (which,unfortunately, only showed periodically later). By 11:30 we were climbing the west side of the Heliotrope Ridge snow field in mostly gray conditions. Some chose to skin up, while others found kick stepping easier. From our lunch spot on the Black Buttes ridge, we got constantly changing vistas in all directions.

  The skiing was simply great. I'll leave it to others to correctly classify the snow, but it turned cleanly,with minimal sluffing.1,100' of fun wasn't enough, so we climbed back up under generally improving visibility and did the run again. After working our way through the tent city at the top of the Hogsback, we packed up our stuff and hiked the 2,200' feet back to the car. So, by my calculation, we got 4,400' of vertical; half on snow and half on the trail.

  More photos can be found at my website http://gallery.telemen.ca/main.php?g2_itemId=3089&g2_navId=x6a0eebb2

Enjoy,
Bob