Climb: Mt. Baker-North Ridge Attempt
Date of Climb: 4/24/2004
Trip Report:
Another failure, another therapy session.
This trip began when NOLSe (John) and I met in Seattle Friday night and drove towards Baker. Snow on the road stopped progress a mile from the trailhead and we joined the 5-6 other cars along the side of the road to car camp. After getting rained on in the middle of the night we slept in before lazily rising to prepare for the approach. At about 10 a.m. we departed for the mountain in a light drizzle.
I’d never been on Baker so early in the year, and was amazed by the amount of snow and the directness of the approach. Once we got out of the trees and were tantalized by views of untracked snow through breaks in the cloud, I very nearly swore off my boot-packing, post-holing, slogging-machine ways once and for all (are you reading this, cracked??).
We set up camp on the Coleman Glacier below Heliotrope Ridge at around 7,000 feet. As the sky cleared and the clouds settled below, we scoped a line over to the North Ridge that we would follow in the morning. The way looked easy since the glacier’s many crevasses were filled in, for the most part.
Our planned 3:30 departure turned into a 4:30 start, and the post-holing began the moment I led off from the tent. At one point when it started to get light, about an hour out from camp, I remember looking back at John following my tracks up the slope and thinking how amazingly fun it was. Slogging is my specialty!
After each punching through once or twice on the glacier, we made it to the direct start of the ridge. The occasional teasingly firm steps inevitably reverted to shin-deep powdered misery (I mean enjoyment). Luckily it wasn’t too much further to the base of the ice cliff, because I was getting tired and looking forward to John getting his chance to lead. And this is where our first mistake (late start) began to be compounded.
We selected the easiest line up the ice and NOLSe started out. Even in the shade of the cliff it wasn’t very cold, and the ice was soft. All the dinnerplating required six or seven swings per stick. The conditions sucked and I lowered John off to search for another way up. There was none to be found, and we should have at least glanced at the topo before looking at the watch and pulling the plug. The correct route apparently skirts the base of the cliff to the left and climbs the back side, rather than the first section you run into on the ridge.
A few hundred feet downslope we stopped for a break and to re-rig the rope to cross the glacier again. And if you didn’t see it coming, this is the point where I lost it. I was pissed because I felt we’d turned around without exhausting our options. I didn’t want to head down, I wanted to go up! It was around 11:30; late, but not absurdly so. Both John and I sat on our packs in silence, me with tears running down my cheeks and he surely regretting his decision to climb with an obsessive girl-person.
The hanging glacier on Colfax Peak avalanched while we watched, and reminded us not to linger below the ice cliff. With my shirt sufficiently snot-covered at this point, we dropped down off the ridge and traversed below the headwall to meet up with tracks made by skiers the previous day. This saved us from losing extra elevation and then having to gain it back to reach camp. The postholing continued without respite and the hot sun made me all the more miserable. I almost wished to fall into a crevasse just so I would cool off. Eventually we ran into the main Coleman-Deming climbing path and were back at the tent shortly. A couple hours later, after a bit of lazing about on my part, we were packed and continued the walk out at 4:30.
Along the way there was a short discussion of my taking a failed climb way too seriously. I know I do this. Maybe the problem is that I haven’t turned around enough. Of the four times I’ve retreated, two were because of whiteout conditions, and I had no problem with those decisions. It’s the times where I feel we should have succeeded and didn’t that eat away at me. NOLSe says I’m driven, I say I’m insane. Take your pick. And come climbing with me next weekend.
