Mount Baker is a big volcano peak near the Canadian Boarder. It’s one of the many volcanos that dot the Cascade Mountains from Canada to California. Although I do a bunch of snow climbing in the McCall area, this will be my first glacier climb.
After delaying our climb for a day, we arrive at the trail head and head up to establish a base camp. This climb is a cake walk so far!
One thing is for sure, there is a bunch of water coming off this mountain.
Creek crossings.
Tom makes his way across this babbling brook.
After hiking a goodly amount of time we pop out of the trees and get our first look at the glacier. The remnants of yesterday’s storm are still built up higher on the mountain.
Lush, green, and steep.
Notice the thick sleeping pads which will be required as we will sleep on rocks and gravel.
Next up we pierce the clouds.
Now it is getting real. Nothing like snow climbing with full packs.
As we nearly pop out of the clouds we hit base camp. Like most big climbs in these parts and despite it being a weekday, there will be others. As usual, Brian chats up these campers and learns they are part of an alpine school. They are here for six days learning the “ropes”. They were surprised to learn that we will climb the mountain in the morning and then decent the full 7000 feet back to the car. By 6 pm tomorrow we will be having Thai food at Sister Jill’s while they will be here for a couple more days eating mountain house.
We throw down the packs and Brian scouts out a location for us to set up camp, hopefully away from others.
Brian finds a site and we move on up. The good thing, we will put our crampons on right in camp and start our climb.
Looking down on other base camps you can see the clouds really want to part.
After a little work, we have a new home for the night.
Finally, the clouds break enough for us to just make out the summit ridge.
Looking down on others from our base camp.
After talking to the other base campers, our call to delay the climb was the right one as apparently it was very rainy here yesterday.
Things are all a go for the morning. It will be a 4 am wake up call and we should be on our feet by 5 am.
Brian and Tom enjoy a couple more stories and it will be bedtime soon. Keep in mind that this far north and this high up that the sun sets very late and it never really gets that dark…. especially with a nearly full moon.
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