August 29, Mt. Baker, Coleman/Demning/Romanwall

I awoke to a strange scratching sound, outside my truck.. a bear?... no it's definatly inside my truck, a rat! or something bigger than a mouse, and it's raising hell. It's three o'clock i'll be up in a bit, and if this thing trys to surface (from the storage under my matress), Sadie will take care of it. Every five minutes she would pounce on the food bin, when the rat was takeing morsels out from underneath,, my tailgate does'ent open and it was to much of a pain in the ass to sleep outside, besides ther're rats out there too. My alarm clock was set for five, but once the rat settled down i finally got some sleep in the form of a snooze-a-thon.
I got started on the trail around 8:30, ready to crush some el. I was  disapointed to find the Helitrope ridge cupped out, but as i got higher the cups dissapeared. there were runnels up to 8k, but sweet ripper corn above that... I proteceted with a picket for that notorious bridge (which really doesent need protection but i had it with me) there was a bit of a "dirty snow" area below the "cleaver" between glaciers. I hiked the cleaver agast at the fine smooth "maylike" corn which awaited me on the Roman wall. There was a little bit of glacial ice undearneath the corn on lookers left of the very top, but fine corn on lookers right. The summit had a bueatifull coat of corn, and I was stoked to ski the Park Headwall and climb back up to ski my approach route. Looking at the headwall gave me pause, there was no way I would ski it without climbing it first. I had time though, and I downclimbed with double axes. After the first ten feet of bueatifull corn,, there was nothing but pure black glacial ice under a "dusting" of corn. I went down further then traversed in hopes of a better find, but the same thing, there was no way I would drop in on this ice rink. Ripper corn the whole way down the Roman Wall. to a little traverse over the "cleaver" where I connected with the Coleman then more good snow, not quite as good, and there were cracks which needed to be bridged in thier locations (all on skiis). A couple crack hops some fun rolly skiing on the runnels low , and i was back at the truck at 5:00. I missed the "prize" of the Park Headwall, but i skiied some PERFECT corn in August, and drank some cold beers at the trailhead.

ill have to get my throwaway developed tommorow for pics