Trip Report: Mt. Baker–via Coleman-Deming Route-Bryan Estes
Posted by Jason A. Hendricks on July 23, 2008 |
One of my regular readers at The Adventurist, Mr. Bryan Estes, has sent along another batch of his trip reports. These cover his climbs throughout the month of July. I will post one of these a day for the next few days, so we can all share in some of Bryan’s experiences.
First up–Mt. Baker. Bryan journeyed to Mt. Baker in early July. This trip report comes just two weeks after Bryan’s successful summit of Mt. Rainier, of which, I also featured. Enjoy the report, and if you feel like it, check out his previous trip report of Mt. Rainier, as well.
_____________________________________
Trip Report
Mt. Baker–via Colman-Deming Route
By Bryan Estes
We started at the Heliotrope Ridge TH at 3,700 ft around 8:30pm on the 5th with the hope that the rain would eventually let up. Recent trip reports had noted that the bridge out of the parking lot was down and an alternate route was required to get onto the trail. Fortunately, with some good beta from AAI we knew there was a log only a hundred feet or so down stream that would get us across pretty easily.
The trail was snow free for the most part through the woods and the only challenge was getting through all the debris and destroyed sections of trail from the winter. We managed to make it out of the trees before nightfall and switched to headlamps as we started our climb toward the base of the Coleman Glacier. It was still raining at this point but we were comfortable and decided we would continue to push on.
By about 11pm we’d reached 6,000 ft and the base of the glacier. We roped up and started following a fresh set of tracks and wands. The rain continued to dump on us but the wind was minimal. We spent the next 2 hours following fresh bootpack and wands as the weather conditions continued to deteriorate. From previous trip reports we knew the route from earlier this summer was no longer intact after some snow bridges had given out the previous weekend. Our beta had us traversing to the climbers left around 7,200 ft to avoid some major crevasses and hook up with the ‘new’ route. Given the lack of visibility we decided to continue to follow the boot pack and wanded route we’d been on. Around 1am and 8,000 ft we reached the large crevasses we’d been expecting to encounter along with the group whose tracks we’d been following. They were working their way back down through a large crevasse below Black Buttes and informed us that the wind was getting pretty strong higher up. With this additional info and continuing rain we decided it was time to turn back.
As we descended the rain did let up slightly and we saw some stars come out but we’d already made the call to turn back and were well on our way. We spent some time fumbling our way through the all of the downed trees along the trail out (including Quinn taking a good tumble down a nice debris pile) and eventually made it back to the car around 4am and back to Seattle.
This was my third time climbing Baker, each time turned back by poor weather conditions.
you are nikki’s boyfriend. I work with her at swedish. I will be going up Mt Baker next week. email me if you want to go.
Take Care Paul More’
September 7th, 2008 at 8:25 am