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[TR] - Mount Baker Wilderness day Loop 2/21/2010


i_like_sun

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Trip: - Mount Baker Wilderness day Loop

 

Date: 2/21/2010

 

Trip Report:

I posted the same thing on Splitboard.com, but here you all go:

 

The Hairy man and I made a day trip circumnavigation of the entire Table Mountain wilderness. Along the way we dropped a pretty direct line off of "Little Alaska", made epic pow turns into Mazama Bowl, dropped off the summit of Stone Man, and finished with sunset turns down Herman.

 

The day started with a ride up chair 1 at 9am, and an easy tour to Artist Point.

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After climbing the steep section to the beginning of Table's Summit Plateau, I snapped some shots of The Sasquatch pooping:

 

What a bastard...

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From there, we traversed to the top of Little AK. I must say, dropping 50+ degree slopes that roll over are scary as hell! It felt like you could just drop forever. Once over the roll, the spine-line revealed itself and all became dandy, but before that my heart was BEATING.

 

Our line followed the spine to the right of the upper fracture:

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Bottom shot gives a feel for how scary that drop was:

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Once at the bottom of Little AK, we traversed under the main cliffs of Table (which was stupid, we could have dropped a SICK line if we just toured up there....) and made our way to the entrance to Mazama Bowl.

 

Traverse:

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Looking back from Mazama Ridge:

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Touring Mazama Ridge:

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Dropping Mazama Bowl:

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Mazama Bowl is downright amazing. The silence of the place with the AWESOME snow made the whole day for me. Who needs church when you can snowboard?

 

A 1500 foot climb up a Coular brought Stone Man into View. The Shuksan Goddess teased us with magnificent views as wind blew billowing powder off her cornices.

 

Skinning up the Coular:

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Cornices and another dream line:

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We traversed to the summit of Stone Man, which proved to be a little scary in places. At one point, when I had reached the summit ridge, I was boot packing along when all of a sudden I was up to my hip in the snow. I knew were were on top of giant cornices, but I thought I was giving plenty of margin as I was a good 50 feet back from the edge. When I extricated myself, I looked into the hole to see that a 2000 foot drop was right under my foot! After a mild freak-out session where a bunch of F-words were dropped, I realized that the cornice must be overhanging by at least 50 feet! My reaction to that experience was simply that death can be achieved SO easily up there. From now on I'm giving at least 60 feet of space from the edge!

 

What I'm talking about:

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12X magnification of Baker's North Ridge and the Cockscomb:

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Baker's Park Glacier Headwall; this would be an EPIC ride!

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Summit of Stone Man with Shuksan:

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From the summit of Stone Man, the entrance into the Coular is downright scary as hell (particularly since I'd just almost died...). You literally have to ride directly at the edge, just trusting that the entrance will appear (thanks Adam, for taking the lead on that one). We made a sketchy entrance into the main Coular that is visible from the Baker Ski area. Its pretty cool to finally drop a line that I've been eye-balling for 10 years! Instead of suffering the Manky traverse above icy cliffs, we finished things off with a tour up Mt Herman's Northeast Ridge.

 

You ride directly to that edge, which goes against all self preservation instincts:

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The entrance. It only appears at the last second:

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Being handsome:

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Sasquatch, leading:

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Looking back up:

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We gained Herman right at sunset, and just couldn't stop taking pictures of the alpenglow. Riding down proved to be super fun near the top where the sun was still softening things up, but once in the shade it all turned to hard breakable crust. Note to self: RIDE NORTH FACING SLOPES! At least right now anyway...

 

On the way up Herman's Northeast ridge with Shuksan:

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Top of Herman, at sunset:

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What its all about:

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Adam, getting a turn:

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End of day shot:

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All in all we covered between 8 and 10 miles of touring. There is some debate between the Sasquatch and I about how much elevation gain/loss we achieved, but I am guestimating between 7,500 and 8,500 feet of gain/loss (including ski/board descents). It all took roughly 8.25 hours, and we moved pretty slow.

 

Gear: normal avalanche stuff, ice axe, pizza, Snickers Bars.

 

Thanks Sasquatch, that was an amazing day!

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I was there on saturday with my wife. last day of a trip. Couldn't get friends from Seattle to come up and tour because they had other things to do and it hadn't snowed in a while. I knew Mazama bowl was going to be good. Glad to see my intuition was correct, but pissed that I didn't get to ski it. Nice job.

 

How was the snow in Stone man?

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Well, everything north facing was amazing. Dropping Stone Man was actually a little sketch because as I rolled into the Coular the snow was nothing but fluffy pow, and then as I charged into the main drop zone it rapidly turned to frozen mank. Almost fell going super fast, and that would have been bad in that spot.. Its weird, north facing was epic great but anything getting sun-baked was scary.

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