Mt. Baker Expedition: June 4-5 2011

Hangin' on Mt. Baker, just chillin' in my puffy

As well as keeping this blog up to date, I'd like to also add some past adventures that predate the creation of AWitF. The most recent is my Mt. Baker Climb. I recently finished my freshmen Year at Western Washington University, Planted right in Bellingham, Washington (Think top, left corner of the continental United States). The first weekend in June fell right between finals and dead week and Western's Outdoor Center  was leading a trip up our local member of the North Cascades Range. Finals schminals, I wanted to end the school year with a metaphorical bang and I signed up. I'm not sure about anywhere else but western Washington's spring has been terrible. The trip the week before our had been canceled due to weather, and I wouldn't have been surprised if ours was preemptively canceled as well. As it turns out this was not the case and we really could not have gotten more lucky with the weather and conditions on the Mountain. 

Mt. Baker

Mt. Baker is a stratovolcano, located due East of Bellingham. Our drive to the trail head (where snow on the road prevented us from continuing on) took about an hour. It is the third tallest peak in the state of Washington and is glaciated and volcanically active. Grant Peak marks the highest point on Mt. Baker, with an elevation of 10,781 feet.  

Caloric Total: Way too many

Heading up Marmot Creek

With two days of climbing, I was planning on burning a lot of calories. Make note of the Caramel Bugles, the salty, sweet indulgence waiting for us in the car. Western's Outdoor Center lead a very solid, well planned, well executed trip. With an emphasis on safety and education on alpine, glacier travel. They did an excellent job and provided all the required technical gear including ice axes, helmets, harnesses, ropes, tents, and crampons and packs, bags, and mats were made available if necessary. David, Spencer, and Adam were our guides, all Western graduates with alpine experience and multiple Baker summits. We took the Deming-Coleman Route, heading up the Marmot Creek valley, getting up on the toe of the Coleman Glacier. Camp was promptly set up after our patch of glacier was deemed crevasse-free. A rockin' snow kitchen was set up for Thanksgiving Dinner (a mixture of instant mashed potatoes, instant stuffing, instant gravy, canned chicken and topped with craisins) while we were put through Snow School. Snow School involved proper use of the ice ax, self arresting maneuvers, and traveling in rope teams. 

Gourmet Snow Kitchen w/ Guides/ Cooks

Think Thanksgiving leftovers, blended together

A rather early start

Summit day had a 1:30 A.M. start. The snow is harder when it is still cold and frozen from the night, helping prevent postholing, and the sooner you can get up the sooner you can get down. Remember, I did have finals at 10:30 the next day (granted, it was a geology final and if you ask me, hiking on a glacier counts as studying). We headed up, headlamps bobbing as started climbing. Beyond camp, we were roped up and we remained that way the entire time until we reached the summit as a safety precaution. intermittent breaks, including snacks, water, peeing and, ahem, blue bag usage, thirty feet remained between the members of each three-man rope team.  

Atop the Roman Wall

We reached the summit at 7:30 in the morning, after watching the stars and moon transition into the sunrise and then full on daytime. It took four hours from camp to reach the summit. By 4:30 in the morning, our eyes had adjusted and I was warm enough, I was traveling without a headlamp in a tee shirt. The summit provided a spectacular, 360 degree view of classic Pac NW landscape. Mt. Shucksun's jagged peak the closest. Rainier and Adams also little (though Rainier was almost unrecognizable to me, I'm used to it being a lot bigger). Looking down was Baker Lake and Bellingham as well as some other civilized areas.  

The truth of the matter is, climbing up I found myself asking, "Why the hell am I doing this?" with  fatigue infecting my thighs and calves and seeming to hop in my blood stream, spreading to the rest of my body and even on the summit, whether it was due to altitude, sleep deprivation, or fatigue, I was irritable, cold, tired, and all around irked, but I think that this is all part of the experience. In Buddhism, suffering is integral to happiness. The contrast must exist for each component to. And so as I suffered, it paid off. Watching the sun rise at 5:00 over the ridge on the way up, looking out in every direction, seeing for hundreds of miles, the the sweet crunch of those Caramel Bugels, rolling back to campus in the OC's van made every painful step, every phlemy cough, and every bulbous blister worth it in the long run. 

Sunset over the tents, night before summit day