Coleman-Deming Route on Mount Baker

Goran having a blast skiing down good snow on the Roman Wall

With the promise of an unseasonably awesome early spring weekend in Seattle, Goran and I convened at work on Friday afternoon to discuss potential objectives.  After considering a few routes, we flipped to Mount Baker.  We couldn't find a single early season report for the North Ridge, but there were plenty for the Coleman-Deming route, including one from the previous weekend.  The conditions seemed right, so we made the call to leave town on Friday night and sleep at the trailhead (or as close as we could get).  After a leisurely dinner at home and some quick packing, we hit the road around 9pm, reaching the end of the road just shy of midnight.  We'd brought camping gear, but the ground was wet and we were only going to squeeze out about 4 hours, so we set up our sleeping bags in the front seats, laid them flat, and passed out.

4:15am came quickly and smacked us both hard enough that gearing up was a pretty slow endeavor.  Nevertheless, we had our bags packed with all sorts of gear (crevasse rescue and avalanche), and began skinning up the road.  We were about three miles from the trailhead and made it there under headlamp, as the ambient light slowly rose.  The trail was pretty easily identifiable as it looked like a few parties had headed up the day or night before.  We followed their tracks and paralleled them in places where the tracks had frozen into a bobsled run.  Conditions were still pretty bulletproof at tree-line when we got our first glimpse of the summit.  We'd come a significant portion of the distance at that point and treated ourselves to a nice little snack.

We headed straight up the ridge from the tree-line break and actually found it easiest to go directly up rather than switchback, given the icy conditions and lack of ski crampons.  The sun was just peeking over from the far side of the mountain at that point and made for some pretty dramatic, long shadows.  The snow thankfully started to soften up as we made it over one crest and then followed the skin track climber's left up a steeper section.  As we made it over the next crest, we could see a bunch of ski descent tracks and another party higher up the Coleman Glacier.  We also passed someone's high camp, which looked like a cozy spot on the snow-covered glacier, relatively well protected and with an amazing view to the North and West.

From this spot high on the Coleman Glacier, we stayed up toward the Black Buttes and Colfax Peak, twisting through the icefalls and avoiding any crevasses that all seemed to be chock-full of snow.  A few more sections of easy skinning brought us to the Coleman-Deming Saddle and much steeper terrain up the Pumice Ridge and Roman Wall.  We started skinning and quickly realized that boot-packing would be necessary.  The change in style of motion was greatly appreciated—my hip-flexors had been on fire and not well traveled on skins so far this season, so putting the skis on my pack and taking step after step worked out quite well.  We met a few other parties on the Roman Wall and had at least one break to down some calories.It was a long day already at that point and we were both aware that it was going to be a fun, but long descent.

After booting up the rest of the Roman Wall, we slapped the skis back on and made the easy traverse to the summit.  A number of other parties were up there and we all traded off doing obligatory photo shoots.  It was a gorgeous day with a little bit of haze and the North Cascades were out in force.  Shuksan was especially prominent in our view, but we could see Glacier and all the way down to Rainier.  Whenever I get on one of these summits, I can't help but realize that there truly is a lifetime of climbing in the area.  Once we both started cooling off, we skinned back to the Roman Wall, nearly heading too far to skier's right before we realized our mistake and dropped in.  The first few turns were a bit spicy for me, but it quickly opened up to really fun skiing on snow that had loosened up a bit, but wasn't wet.  It was awesome, especially with the view down to the saddle and glaciers in front of us.

We continued skiing down and never needed our skins again.  The section at the top of the Coleman Glacier was especially powdery and fun—we spent a while whooping and loving the experience despite aching quads and lots of unnecessary gear in our packs, weighing us down.  In an effort to find an easier way out, we traversed higher than we'd come in on the trail in hopes that we could avoid skiing out the tight, winding path.  Unfortunately, the snow had warmed significantly, but still had a bit of a crust.  The combination was really tough for me and I proceeded to eat it a number of times into the soft snow.  We eventually made it back down to the main trail and found the ski out from there to be surprisingly easy.  I snow-plowed to glory with some total survival skiing.  The final bit on the road back to the car was exceptionally easy going, but still tough given how tired my legs were.  I stopped a few times to shake them out before coasting to the car and ripping off my boots.  We were elated and commiserated about our feet that felt like hamburger…we'd done about 9,000ft of elevation gain over the day and had covered just shy of 20 miles.  It was a big one.

With celebratory beers complete and shoes removed, we began the drive home, having the standard, jubilant, retrospective conversation people have after big days in the mountains.  It was a great day and first climb with Goran.

Circumnavigation of Chair Peak

Coming back up from Melakwa Lake

After two awesome days of climbing in Vantage, I came back to town and met Cam for a little President's Day ski tour.  As we drove up towards Snoqualmie Pass, I didn't actually know what our objective would be--I assumed a simple skin up to Pineapple Pass and some laps.  As we pulled into the upper parking lot, Cam started talking about circumnavigating Chair Peak.  My lack of preparation (no real lunch other than bars, aching arms from two days of climbing, and first time on skins for the season), was mildly alarming to me, but I successfully suppressed any fear and put a smile on.  It was time to get dragged around a bit.

We passed a group while still heading toward The Tooth (mainly due to Cam's stance that switchbacks are typically unnecessary and that, as long as skins are grabbing, one should go straight up) and then took a right to start skirting Bryant Peak.  We hit one section steep enough that a boot-pack was necessary, but otherwise were able to make good progress on our skis.

Just over the Bryant-Chair Col, we hit an incredibly fun section of powder with only one other track.  We cruised down toward Melakwa Lake (ok, Cam cruised and I did one submarine-tip double-ejection superman fall, then cruised).  From there, it was a long, but pretty mellow, ascent up to Melakwa Pass, where we struggled to see where the cornice broke since the light was so flat.  Cam grabbed some pine needles and chucked them over the lip so we could see.  With a little more confidence, we headed down a steep, fluffy pitch of skiing to Chair Lake, popped the skins on briefly to get over one more rise, and then had a longer, really fun descent to Snow Lake.  As we headed down our run, which felt plenty hard for me, some skiers were coming down a tight chute from higher on Chair Peak.  It looked burly.

Snow Lake was gorgeous and perfectly flat for quite a ways, so Cam broke a "conversation" track next to me and we chatted our way until the last climb, which brought us up above Source Lake.  A bumpy descent through avalanche debris got us down to the well-traveled 'bobsled run' and back out to our car.  The whole adventure was about 5 hours and we weren't pushing the pace much.  Good times!

South Spur on Mount Adams

After gazing North at Mount Adams from Hood two weekends ago, the decision had already been made in my head: with our first good weather window, we'd make a break from work early on Friday to head down and charge the mountain.

Thunderstorms and questionable weather were forecast for Seattle and the North Cascades, but Adams looked quite clear, so we made the long drive out 90, down past Yakima, across toward Hood River, then up to Trout Creek before busting onto the forest roads that brought us (after a mild missed turn incident and Civic off-road excursion) to Cold Springs Campground at the trailhead.  It was packed when we finally rolled in around 11pm--it seemed that every nook our headlights passed over was filled with a car or tent.  We eventually found a spot on somewhat even ground and hit the hay with a wake-up planned for 6am.

We'd heard that things were a bit icy in the morning and that skinning would be tough until later in the day, so there wasn't much motivation to get a super-alpine start.  We leisurely ate breakfast, packed up the ski gear, and started hiking up the trail in our running shoes at about 7:45am.  This was definitely the right method--we were fast and comfy all the way up to a large bowl from which the snow cover seemed consistent to the top.

The last time I'd clicked into the AT setup was on Rock Mountain with Cam--an experience that did not instill confidence in my strength on fat skis.  Nevertheless, I felt pretty stable despite sloppy snow and some steeper slopes.  We quickly rose up to the main plateau below the ramp up to Piker's Peak.  Skinning was still easy up to the base of the ramp, but it was clear that the established boot-pack was going to be a more efficient way to gain vertical, so we strapped the skis to our packs and started huffing our way up.

With Piker's at 11,600ft and a home at sea level, the altitude started to hurt us all a bit as we slogged up the ramp.  There were some other people on skis who were switch-backing their way up at about the same speed we were on foot, so we didn't feel terrible about keeping the skis off.

A healthy snack and break at Piker's set us up well for the final summit push.  The snow quality from the summit to Piker's looked pretty poor, so we left the skis there and boot-packed our way up the final 700 ft of vertical to the true summit.  We were all a bit tired, but not too worse for the wear and had an awesome time up at the top, with views of Hood, St. Helens, and Rainier.  Not too shabby.

From the summit down to Piker's was slippery plunge-stepping, but not terrible.  We eventually made it to the skis, locked in our heels, and started the quad-screaming descent.  The first pitch was relatively steep for most of us, but the snow had softened quite a bit by that point, so we were able to navigate our way down the ramp to easier ground, which was incredibly fun.  Nothing was too sun-cupped or variable, so we were able to open it up a bit and really enjoy the skiing (taking copious breaks to let the quads relax a bit).  The rest of the descent was really quick, with mostly consistent snow until well below where we'd switched over on the way up.

Putting the running shoes on was a religious experience.  We quickly hiked the rest of the way out, packed up, and drove straight to BZ Corner where we patroned the local saloon and replenished much-needed calories.  Win.