On long weekend of July 4th I wanted to do something new and unusual. But all my plans failed, and the only variant that appeared was climbing Mt Baker. Again. Well, at least last I was on Baker in 2011, and I always climbed from south. This time we made it from north (or you can call it west). The road to the trail-head is good paved, but very narrow and very-very snaky.
We started at 1 pm, at camp place were at 4 pm. Trail though the forest to glacier takes about hour. It is much shorter then south approaches. And about two ours on glacier to the rocks of Heliotrope Ridge. Actually it is easy doable as single push. Should try next time. It was a lot of people on the trail, less, but also enough went to the glacier.
Exit to the glacier:
It was a fog on the glacier. Heavy rainy fog. Visibility was close to zero, 2-5 meter maximum. We came to Heliotrope Ridge, on flat empty snowfield. Nobody around! Everybody left on the rock and lower on the glacier. Perfect. But it was only 4 pm and no reason to go high (from this point up to the top there is no good place for camp). So we saw the movie and had very long sleep.
Woke up at 5 am, fog was so heavy, that it was impossible to see anything outside. Tea, breakfast. At 6 am fog around us become more clear.
Above us mountain was invisible, but below some clearances appeared, so we decided to go up.
Well, how you can image, the fog didn’t disappeared for our whole way to summit and back to camp. Also it was rainy. It is something psychotic to climbing glacier under the rain. Snow was deep, heavy and wet, especially on Roman wall. But it was good trail and we had gps, so we succeed. On the top was cold, windy and nothing to see, so we quickly run back. We met only three other rope, the rest of potential climbers decided not to go and spent the day in tents.
Little photo-session of glacier in the fog:
We came to the tent completely wet, snow and rain made their job. It is cold to be wet on the glacier, so we decided run down without lunch. At the end of the glacier even some sun appeared and present nice picture of glacier:
Waterfall in the forest:
Nest time will do it as single push and under the sun:)
