Climbing Mount Baker

On the long weekend I climbed Mount Baker in Vancouver. This is a mountain in Washington state that on a clear day is visible from Vancouver and dominates the horizon. Its part of the volcano chain that includes Mount St. Helen's and Mount Ranier. These mountains rise up above everything around them. Mount Baker is just under 11 000 feet which puts it just in the zone where you might feel altitude sickness. Our trip had significant amount of faff below the glacier before our final Monday ascent so no one was feeling sick.

The first day we camped beside the Coleman glacier, if you look carefully you can see tiny people doing a glacier school just where the glacier starts to flatten out.

The next day we hiked over to the climbers ridge where you would start your ascent of Baker. We ran into a Marmot who made faces at us as he (she?) defended the path because there were babies off to the side.

We climbed up the first part of the glacier and camped on a rocky section surrounded by the snow. Here's a great photo looking at the horizon. Already we are fairly high up.


And here's a picture of the peak of Baker in sunset. At the very far right of the picture just behind the peak is a flat snow section which is called the Roman Wall. That's the final part of the climb up Baker so we spent our afternoons watching parties slowly make their descent. We did not go up the front which you can see here but around to the left and eventually up to the Roman Wall.

Monday started at 6 am with breakfast and then we started out onto the glacier. We had to be roped in because there were lots of crevasses. The day previously we had practiced our ice ax arrests (yes, we had ice axes) on the snow slope and we also carried some crevasse rescue equipment. Roland Burton (66? and MEC member number 2) led the charge (he also led the charge on the Neve). Here I am almost at the base of the Roman Wall. It took us only 2.5 hours to get here but then another 2 hours up the wall. You can see that even though we are well below the peak we are well above anything else around.

I don't have any photos as we ascended the Roman Wall (we took off the rope because if someone fell they would drag us all down). The Roman Wall was like a steep snow covered roof that took at least an hour to climb. I don't have any photos because I didn't want to lose my balance. It was a long slide down to end up dead at the bottom of a crevasse. For us the wall was mostly crusty soft snow but it could be quite technical when it turns icy. While climbing the Roman Wall we were blasted by sulphur fumes. Baker is an active volcano and we could see steam rising from the crater which was down a little ways from the true peak.

Here's a picture looking down into the crater, you can see some of the steam.

And here I am at the peak.

And another shot looking in the opposite direction. Behind me is the giant snow dome that's visible from Vancouver.

So after a great lunch on the summit we hiked back. At the base of the Roman Wall we ran into another party that we had seen at the summit. Everyone who summited that day wore crampons except us, Roland is not a fan unless you are on ice or wear them all the time because they can be dangerous. We saw just how dangerous because a guy had broken his ankle close to the peak when he had glissaded down (purposfully slide down on his ass for a faster descent) a slope wearing crampons and his foot caught and snap. Ouch. That's why they say never wear crampons and glissade. Anyway, his party had stabilized the leg with an ice ax and tied his legs together and they were in the process of sliding him down the glacier. They had their glacier rope tied to his harness but he kept rolling around. Our group joined in and some clipped in and we dragged him almost the entire way down. He was in pretty good spirits but by the time he reached our camp he was ready to throw up.

Here you can see them tying in. You can also see my glacier travel rope that I'm tied in to.

So all in all it was a fantastic trip. The route and weather that we had made Baker the 'baby mountaineer' trip but I had tons of fun. My knee was a bit sore by the end but it was worth it. We had perfect weather and no accidents and I didn't kill myself getting to the top (considerably less work than crossing the Neve). Although I did sunburn the inside of my nose from all the reflections.