June 8, 2013 - Baker North Ridge

Our overall route up the Glacier Creek Rd and up the summer trail

Our climbing route across the Coleman Glacier, up the North Ridge and back down the Coleman-Deming route

The north ridge of Baker had been on my list for a while as a moderate ice climbing route on a big volcano. I was excited enough about the route to not blink an eye at the 7 mile, 2500' gain bike approach to the trailhead over the now closed Glacier Creek Rd. Actually the closure probably made our climb more enjoyable by keeping the masses off the Coleman-Deming route.

On Saturday we took off from town with all our gear packed up in panniers and bikes strapped to the roof of the Subaru. After turning off onto Glacier Creek Rd we drove the 2 miles to the road closure and then started the process of attaching all those heavy bags to the back of our rides.

All geared up ready for the bike approach

The road was certainly more steep than I remember from driving it, but my 39x27 was enough to get me all the way to the trailhead. I certainly cut my fair share of switchbacks up the steep sections of pavement, but the road is in great condition given some of the other forest service roads out there. We were crawling along, though, as the 7 miles of road took about 2 hours to cover.

Resorting gear for the approach to camp

The hike into camp went fairly smoothly and we found ourselves with much of the afternoon to relax, enjoy the "mostly sunny" weather that was rolling in and out, and practice some crevasse rescue. As the light slowly faded, we all passed out with an early morning wake up in order.

Camp at 6200'

Slopes above camp

Bryan enjoying the views from camp, which were great when the clouds actually opened up

Clouds billowed in and out throughout the evening, only clearing overnight.

Bryan and Garrett passed out well before sunset, but owing to the fact that I brought up a tripod, I didn't have that luxury. I set up my bivy, dialed up a little fire in my buddy burner, and hung out and watched the light show. The sea of clouds provided some excellent sunset conditions, but the clouds rolled in thick once it got dark. I got a little bit of shut-eye, but was awoken by the sensation of clear sky above, and indeed a few hours into the night it had cleared up and the stars were out in full force. I did my best to setup a composition including the BD tent Bryan and Garrett were in, and fell back asleep to the sound of shutter clicks.


Sunset clouds and Koma Kulshan stars from Erik Turner on Vimeo.


We got up and moving by 5:30, behind a group of two going up the Coleman and a group of 4 going up towards North ridge. The group of four started out as small dots, but as we worked our way through the crevasses of the glacier and up towards the ramp taking us up to the ridge, we found ourselves right behind them. A bit of jockeying took place, and they picked up their pace just enough to get to the ice pitches before us, so we made an anchor of sorts and hung out for about an hour as they started up the first pitch.

Early morning light on the glacier

Refrozen wet slides - probably from the Memorial Day storm cycle

Four dots ahead starting up the ramp

Large crevasse, thankfully well bridged

Looking up at the ice pitches left skyline is "left option" whereas climbing up near the rocks in the center of frame is the "right option"

Checking out the view to the north from the ridge

We made a short pitch out of getting into position behind the first group, and waited as long as our patience would allow. Finally Bryan went up hoping to find a line next to theirs and get us moving again. After pulling over the lip, though, it was clear the most straightforward path lead right up through the group, and we had to wait behind as they all finished up and gained the hard snow pitches above the ice.

Bryan setting up the first anchor after trying to climb around the group in front of us

Garrett pulling the crux of the second pitch

Several pitches of hard snow ended when we got tired of moving at "pitch it out" speed

The final difficulties involved weaving through this serac garden, and then stepping across a few cracks to gain the final snow slope. The seracs were even more beautiful around the corner, but I felt that lingering for too long was a bit risky...

Sketchy snowbridge high up on the ridge

Alpenglow was gorgeous, but it was getting a bit late to still be on the glacier...

Beautiful sunset on the Coleman glacier

With all the delays on the ice pitches, and our slow progress on the snow slopes above, we found ourselves on the summit at around 6:30. The only other time I had descended the Coleman-Deming was on skis, so the long flat stretches on the lower glacier seemed to last forever as we postholed along. After a while the top surface of the snow started to freeze over and postholing in soft snow yielded to postholing through breakable crust. We finally got down to camp, packed up and hustled out the summer trail with headlamps. The bike ride downhill wasn't as sketchy as I had feared - only the first gravel patch caught me by surprised and caused me to crash. My former bike handling skills came in handy as I dispatched the fall with a somersault and was off again down the dark road.

May 11, 2013 Mt Baker

Having climbed Mt St Helens the previous weekend in beautiful weather, Nicole and I figured another volcano ought to be on the list if the weather was good. The high pressure ridge hung around for most of the week, but showed signs of deteriorating on Sunday, so we decided to head into camp below Heliotrope ridge on Friday afternoon and climb on Saturday.

We were able to drive just past Lookout creek, and if we were a bit more bold with the Subaru, probably could have gotten over that patch of snow and up the road another mile. Having plenty of time, however, we opted to park it and walk/skin the ~2 miles to the trailhead. I realized I left my glacier glasses in the car after walking uphill for 15 minutes... nothing a short barefoot jog can't fix... Once at the summer trailhead I led us down to the stream and in a few minutes wandered about the trees until we found the bridge crossing the creek - newly replaced since last summer! We didn't learn until the next day that there is a much more straightforward approach for skiiers up the Grouse Creek drainage.
Baker Approach from Erik Turner on Vimeo.

Some friendly Canadians took a self portrait not knowing I was juuuust about winding the bend. If you see these characters  take their camera and shoot something weird with it...

Up the summer trail we went - flanked by a gregarious solo BC dude ahead of us, and trailed by the group of 5 wanna be photographer BCers. The trail was fairly annonying for the most part - skis on and off several times, handful of sketchy creek crossings, but eventually as we got up towards Kulshan creek it started to open up.


Baker - approach 2 from Erik Turner on Vimeo.
Baker Approach from Erik Turner on Vimeo.

We crossed Kulshan, our last crossing, and headed up the ridge line and started to break out of the trees as low angle light started to filter through the clouds.

evening light as we neared camp

I pushed Nicole to go a bit further a few times so that we'd have a good view of the mountain from camp. I had an eye for getting another time lapse and wanted to frame the mountain with stars trailing around in the background. As the sun slowly slipped down past the forested ridges behind us, some beautiful light hit the clouds up above Baker.

View from camp. We climbed a bit behind the right skyline. Left skyline is North ridge

Evening light getting good!

glacier folds and beautiful clouds... wonderful backdrop to have dinner in front of...

The timelapse turned out quite well - It was my first time using Magic Lantern to trigger the shots in camera, and also the first time I've used LRTimelapse, which is an amazing program that makes assembling a timelapse much easier.

Koma Kulshan stars from Erik Turner on Vimeo.

We ran out of fuel while melting snow for water for the next day, and had to get by with about 2 liters each. I normally wouldn't have wanted to carry much more, but I would have taken the stove with fuel up and made more water somewhere along the route. Fortunately the morning was just cloudy enough to keep it cool, and we were able to get by with the water we had.

morning light

Climbing conditions were perfect as we skinned up the lower Coleman - pausing at around 7000' to rope up before continuing up along the standard route close to the Black Buttes. We enjoyed gorgeous views of the glacier and the route above, put to scale by the 5 Canadians in front of us.

rounding about the first steep step on the lower Coleman before roping up

Crevasses far below on the lower Coleman

can you see the climbers?

Climbers above a series of seracs

Baker and Colfax

Nicole leading the way up towards the saddle

impressive crevasses looking up towards Colfax from just below the 9000' saddle.

We arrived at the saddle with plenty of time before our turn around, so all was looking good. A quick rest and some refueling, and we were booting it up the steep section just around the corner from the Roman wall. Some topos label the Roman wall as what this route climbs, and some label it as the Coleman headwall - regardless, we climbed right up between the two rimy rock bands you can clearly see once you swing onto the Deming.

Looking across the Deming glacier towards Glacier Peak

The masses are coming!

Lenticulars forming downstream of the summit.... it's gonna get windy!

Nicole approaching the summit

top of the world!

We enjoyed some beautiful summit views, which were cut short by the strong winds that were whipping up pretty strongly. I didn't even scope out the drop down onto the Park headwall, or the route out towards the ski area - routes I'd like to do sometime - oh well. I'll just have to climb N. Ridge to get a view then!

The ski out was fantastic... very doable up high with soft enough snow to turn right at the top of the Roman Wall. And even as it got heavy on the way down, it still skiied very well, with easy carving conditions all the way out the Grouse Creek drainage.

Skiing is so much fun!

Packing up camp... tent almost got away!?

I skiied down a bit extra to retrieve camp - not knowing where the winter route was the night before we had set up camp too low. I packed my 38L with about 50L worth of junk and brought it back up to the ridge and met up with Nicole for the easy traverse and ski out via Grouse Creek.

Beautiful cloud formations in the afternoon light

Nicole starting the traverse over towards the winter route

A beautiful day out in the mountains, and I think an excellent way to begin our summer climbing schedule of having half days off on Friday! Having that extra half day makes so many more trips either possible or just more enjoyable. Next up on the list are Glacier, Olympus, Rainier.... some of those perhaps taking a bit more than the 2.5 day "weekends" we've been enjoying...