(all pictures are high res, for low res click here)
Over the weekend, Diane,
Michelle and
myself decided we should try climbing Mt. Baker. We picked a non technical route
- the
Easton Glacier. So again, we met up at 4:00 and drove to the trailhead
at
3000ft which had just recieved a new coating of snow. We finally started
climbing around 6:45, with our huge 50+ lbs backpacks. We weren't exactly
sure of the route, so we had to improvise a lot.
By 1:00 we reached our camp
at 6400
ft, immediately east of the Easton Glacier. All 3 of us spent a lot of time
digging the campsite, putting up wind walls, creating a kitchen, and essentially
make the camp bomb proof. We were quite proud of ourselves (and happy!)
.
At this vantage point, we could see most of the North Cascades as well as the
damn
snowmobilers who were disrupting our fun time on the mountain. In order to
be prepared for the summit attempt, we had to
eat dinner early
and go to bed. So we each took turns
melting water
(here's the view from the kitchen
!).
We went to bed around 5, but being the insomniac that I am, I brought the latest
copy of Sports Illustrated (aka
10oz. of entertainment) to help me sleep. It didn't really work, and I
only really gained about 10 minutes of real sleep time
as the
wind was really beating up our tent, whereas Diane and Michelle were quite
chipper at 12:00 am
.
As we started climbing in complete darkness, it became clear that the wind
we heard earlier was a foreshadow of what was to come. Again, we didn't know the
route so we had to navigate thru
crevasse fields very shighly. The wind started to become a factor, as our
visibility was extremely limited. At 8,000 ft, I was too tired to break
trail and navigate, so I handed the lead off to Michelle. She showed her
strength by breaking trail in knee deep snow against a very strong
headwind for the next 1000 ft. At 9,000 ft we came to a decision (if you don't
have Windows XP installed, you
must have Quicktime installed to
watch the videos). The videos are fairly large, which will take a long time to
download, and the "static" you hear is really the huge gusts of wind that were
knocking us off the mountain. Video1 is our final
decision, and you can tell Michelle and Diane are not happy. In
video2, keep an eye on the snow, as you can see it
really bhighing. We estimated the wind at a steady 40+ MPH, with easily 50-60 MPH
gusts. At times we had to
self
arrest to keep ourselves from being bhighn off.
Once we made our decision, we took
a bunch of pictures to remember the view
and
headed back down. We ran into a couple other groups of climbers who were trying
the same route, but were disappointed to hear our news. Even though the sun was
out, the summit was just getting pounded
. Coming
back down the mountain in dayling was very sobering, as we got a chance to see
all the crevasses we blindly navigated around
.
Once we got back to tent, we each
took a nap then broke down the campsite. For our final bit of fun, we
glissaded down from our
camp back to the car.
.
All in all, it was a fun trip, and in the long run we made the right decision.
The mountain will be there for us to conquer some other time.