Baker Summit Rainout

We were invited a few months ago to join an attempt to summit Mt Baker. After weeks of sunshine, we gathered on a damp, overcast Friday morning to pile into suburbans and head up to the mountain... and the forecast wasn't looking good. But we had raincoats and rain pants, so away we went!

Our plan was to hike the Coleman Deming route (very cool map here!), starting at the Heliotrope Ridge trailhead. We picked up parking passes at the Deming ranger station, and then geared up in the drizzly parking lot. Part of gearing up included covering our packs so that our gear would be dry when we set up camp.

The usual mountain summitting schedule goes something like this:

• Gather early in the morning and drive to the trail head. 
• Hike up to base camp, arriving mid-afternoon. 
• Unpack your tents, make food, and go to bed... if you can. 
• Get up around midnight and pull your gear together, toss food and water in backpacks, and rope up. 
• Hike up, and up, and up... follow the bobbing line of headlamps and crunch of crampons on crusty snow. 
• Reach the summit mid-morning. High-five. 
• Walk/run back down the mountain, arriving at your tent in time for lunch. Eat some hard-earned food!
• Break camp. 
• Hike back to the car. 
• Go home. 

 We hiked in our rented mountaineering boots, which were heavy and clumsy but kept our feet dry across several streams. Their plastic outer shells are designed to be a solid platform for clamping crampons on. Our logic was that they would have been even heavier loaded on our packs! I discovered that the insulated liners are toasty and keep your calves from tightening up when you're loafing around camp!

The last part of the approach hike was a section of trail that wound up a glacial moraine called Hogsback, parallel to Heliotrope Ridge. In our case, that was the last part of our hike. We put our tents between those of a few other mountaineers, stacking rocks to anchor the guy lines for our rain fly and hold it off our tent. We dozed, made some food, and listened to the rain go from a quite patter, to steady pour, and finally reduce to a light drip. 

 

(home sweet tent!)

 Mid-afternoon, our leader pulled us together and said that due to weather, we should cancel our attempt to summit. We would likely be climbing in pouring rain, and the whiteout snow at the summit was a navigation hazard for our climb down. We did get an hour or so to practice our ice axe arrest skills (dive down the mountain, then stop yourself!) and traversing while roped together. It was great fun! But since we weren't summitting, we decided to break camp early and head back to the car. We rolled into our own beds around the same time we would have been waking up to go up the mountain!

Our calendar is filled up for the rest of the summer, but fingers crossed we'll give it another try next summer!