After palisaded Kique had suggested the cascades as a natural progression to get a taste of massive crevasses in the north West. This was going to be just me, Christoph, Melanie and Kique. Our plan was to spend 2 nights on Mount Baker and summit it twice on consecutive days. Before heading up we had planned to camp at Hogsback camp for the first night and then summit first through the north ridge and then through the Coleman Dening route. The hike from the parking lot up to Hogsback is pretty chill and took us a little less than an hour and half. We were expecting rain for the whole trip so we knew from start this will be a touch and go trip. Our camp site was quite isolated and spacious. From the campsite we could see the massive prominence of Baker behind us.
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| Campsite at Hogsback |
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| First mini crevasse |
Day1: We setup camp and Kique made me, Christoph and Melanie perform some rope skills. Given we were expecting large glaciers and snow bridges and Kique was the only experienced guide I was given the duty to learn kiwi coiling. The weather was becoming worse and we got rained on a little bit. Kique wanted to run up part of the route to checkout how conditions on north ridge looked given the massive crevasse field but given we the weather was not holding up we switched the itinerary a bit. Day3 was looking better than Day2 so we decided to first go to Coleman on Day2 and then go to North Ridge on Day3. The thought was that bailing from north ridge will be way harder than bailing from Coleman Deming (CD) route.
Before supper we went for a brisk warm up to acclimatize and checkout the snow conditions. This was just to get the muscle memories back and also get a feel for the route. On our way up we saw our first mini crevasse.
Day 2: We had an alpine start close to 2:30 am and started towards baker via the CD route. The weather was holding up (no rain) but visibility was quite poor. Before the trip Kique had mentioned that I will be in charge of taking us through CD and though on paper and website CD is mentioned as an easy route there were quite a lot of hurdles. I started setting pace for the group and following a bootpack set by previous climbers. The first hurdle was an icy section and I wasn't sure of how to approach it or how bad it was going to be. The second hurdle was a massive crevasse that had a tiny snow bridge. After crossing this snow bridge the weather started to get worse. The visibility reduced so much that we could not see the whole party. I was at the end as Kique wanted to set the pace and route and I could only see the person in front. We raced through a debris filed where a serac had collapsed. All through the journey for the past two days we had heard others climbers speak about a massive crevasse that had opened up with a single snow bridge to cross and we knew we had to be very close to this crevasse. Bad visibility, being in an unknown debris field and given this massive crevasse was close by we decided to turn around. The weather was predicted to get worse and we didn't want to take any risks.
After turning back we raced out of the debris field. We were literally running on a rope team which not the most pleasant experience but we had no clue how loaded the upper slopes were. On the way out we can back to the icy sections that we all struggled on while coming up. Kique decided that would be a great learning opportunity on setting up snow picket anchors and another ice clinic so we spent a good couple of hours practicing all our skills.
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| Placing ice screws that we were going to rappel off |
On our way out the weather started clearing up a lot so we decided to go and scout a bit for the north ridge. The crevasses looks pretty impassable but we were literally threading through ice bridges and jumping over crevasses. There were some crevasses where we were ready to plunge with the ice axes in case the snow bridge gave away. This ended up being an easy 12 hour day even though we decided to bail on our main objective of reaching summit through the
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| Crevasses that we had traversed through in the background |
On Day3 Christoph stayed back while me, Melanie and Kique set up after another alpine start at 2am back on our scouted route from the previous day to attempt at climbing the north ridge. We were fairly quick on reaching the spot from previous day through all the crevasses. A little before day break we reached our first hurdle - our first bergschrund.
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| Crossing the bergschrund at the base |
If the snow had covered this crevasse it should have been an easy 45 minutes hike to the next spot but not this season. Kique started setting up the route on our first ice climbing objective. Before this trip I knew that we were going to do multiple pitches of ice climbing WI-3 or WI-4 but this looked crazy. We were going to side climb on ice in total darkness above a crevasse! Luckily the snow was not totally icy and I could get a couple of inches of my foot actually in which made this easier. All bad thoughts of slipping the way I had in Lee Vining with my crampons coming out or harness opening up started coming. I actually started panicking a bit cursing my self why I get my self into such things and why can't I be at home doing what normal people do.
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| View from the belay point where Kique shot up the ridge. We saw and heard a few ice falls routinely. |
After crossing the bergschrund we made to the ridge with some ice fall. We were going to ice climb the ridge by traversing ridge up and over and move left. Kique shot up leaving us to look at mini avalanches. If crossing the bergschrund was scary then this next part was insane. The conditions were more icy and way more exposed. For this section both me and Melanie were climbing together with Kique belaying us both. Both me and Melanie had to be really careful to not swipe each other or thrust a steel crampon into each others face! Of the whole trip this section was the scariest for me. I was worried about losing an ice axe, dropping a crampon or just getting cramps which would make us all turn around.
We kept doing these running belays when needed for the next couple of hours and reached the crux of our climb which is what Baker is known for. The easy section if it can be called that was below us. The reason it was easy is because the terrain was not as steep as 80 to 90 degrees hence only considered WI-1 or WI-2.
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| 'Easy section' below us! |
The actual climb was definitely intimidating but after luckily for me at this point I was feeling fairly confident. The weather had improved, the sun was out and my fear or losing crampons or harness had not happened. My arms were feeling good and I was not making the whole group slow down or making them turn around. We took a quick water and snack break and hit the famed wall with Melanie going first.
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| Melanie on the near vertical north ridge |
Climbing the north ridge was a fabulous experience. I had so much adrenaline that this was actually happening that honestly I don't remember much except the part when it got over. I just remember going all in with one stroke after another without thinking much. Both me and Malanie didn't slip or struggle at all. It felt like all the previous training at Lee Vining and climbing earlier in the route had prepared us for this section. We ended up reaching the last bit of climbing which looked straight from the movies. We were on soft snow which looked like a knife edge with thousands of foot of exposure.
Once this section was done the terrain eased out. We were close to 1 hour from the summit and it was getting quite late. It was already 11pm and we had a 8pm flight to catch from Seattle which seemed impossible. I mentioned Kique that reaching the summit is not the primary objective and I would be more than happy to make it down safely if we are losing time. To which Kique replied no way he was letting me tell my friends that Kique doesn't summit :P
So we started the push towards the summit. On the way we encountered a crevasse or a gap on the top of the mountain. I wish I had take a photo of the approach. We literally ice climbed from one side down to a snow bridge and climbed up on the other side with me and Melanie on either side of the lip to protect Kique in case the snow bridge gave way. This was the realistic last objective and the summit was in sight.
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| Summit half and hour away |
We quickly raced to the summit tagged it, pissed on the summit and wrote our names on the summit register and started the descent via the Coleman Deming route.
On the way down we quickly descended the Romain wall and rocky section and came to this famous massive 'impassable' crevasse. This crevasse was huge but we were above it and didn't quite realize how big it was before crossing it. It took us a good 1 hour to figure out a way around it. We setup a belay spot, Kique descended looked around for the only snow bridge climbed back up and said no luck. We were considering leaving a rope behind and actually traversing the whole thing on ropes, or stay the night there and wait for help. Luckily after 4 attempts Kique spotted the bridge and we could cross this crevasse. We raced across the Debris field that we had encountered the previous day on our way up and realized how sketchy this section was. A massive serac had fallen hundreds of feet from the top. After a few more hours we could see our camp and Christoph who was super relieved on seeing Melanie and all of us safe. We packed up got into our car to head back to civilization.
