Stefan Posted January 26, 2004 Share Posted January 26, 2004 Climb: Mt. Herman- Date of Climb: 1/25/2004 Trip Report: Mt. Herman January 25, 2004 USGS Shuksan Arm Why is it that the past 3 outings I have planned all have incorporated "Weather Storm Warnings" by NOAA? I guess I have the luck. Greg K., Paul K., Juan L., and John M. joined me on this decent romp in the woods just outside of the Mt. Baker ski resort. Our goal was to do Slate first and then do Mt. Herman, but avalanche conditions were too high to do Slate first so I thought we could do Herman, and then Slate avoiding some avalanche paths. So we left the upper most parking lot at 9:00a.m. and up the valley where Bagley Lakes lies. Soon after following the trail, we noticed some people up higher and they were cutting fresh tracks in the snow--we followed them all the way up to the ridge. These tracks helped us immensely but soon we were on our own as the people setting the tracks decided to ski down. We traversed the ridge staying to the south of point 5723 and then traversed down to the saddle immediately to the west. Snow consolidations during the day amounted to 12-36 inches of very dry snow on top of an icy layer below depending on the angle of the slope. During this traverse the skys cleared and the views were pretty good of our objective. From the saddle we dropped down slightly and then went to the SE slope of Mt. Herman. The SE slope of Mt. Herman was the steepest part of the climb and entailed probably a low class 3 type of climbing with icy snow conditions underneath the snow. We made the summit in foggy conditions (3.5 hours) and I decided to not do Slate Mountain. I was only going to commit to do Slate Mountain if we could see how we were going to get down the north side of Herman. We had the time to do Slate Mountain, but we needed to see what we were up against on the downhill section. Since we couldn't see anything we turned around and came out. We came out by going over the saddle west of point 5723 and then down to the trail. We could not start an avalanche the whole day becuase the snow just did not work out that way. It was my opinion that slab avalanches would be difficult to develop but a loose snow avalanche might be possible. 2.5 hours out. This trip is highly recommended for backcountry skiers. Stefan Feller Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
klenke Posted February 7, 2004 Share Posted February 7, 2004 Four photos of Mt. Herman: Mt. Herman eastern basin Mt. Herman summit close up Mt. Herman, Pt. 5723 Mt. Herman summit posse Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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