[TR] Mt Baker - Coleman - Deming 2nd Act 6/15/2007

[jhflying]

Trip: Mt Baker - Coleman - Deming 2nd Act

 

Date: 6/15/2007

 

Trip Report:

2nd weekend, same crappy weather. Trail was melting out nicely. Even the climbers trail on the Hogsback was opening up. Camps at 6,000 were pretty much clear of snow.

 

We continued up to high camp below black buttes again at 7,200'. Alpine start under clear calm skies, but the snow was much softer even in the middle of the night. I kicked steps through the crust most of the way to the saddle. From high camp, we stayed very high on the upper Coleman, right below black buttes, and going through the ice fall seemed easier than last week. The large crevasse below the saddle continues to open up, so we traversed further left to find a snow bridge.

 

Weather came down when we were at the saddle, and since I had newbies, we turned around. By the time we made it back to camp, it was a full blown snow storm. At least the snow was better than the freezing rain from last week. It was snowing about an inch per hour, so it was really coming down. By 6,000', it had turned to snow pellets, and of course rain by 5,000'.

 

And yes, this week I placed wands and removed them. Ah, experience.

[Hendershot]

My team must have been camping right next to you. We were the 7 party (4 tents) that assesed the conditions at 2 am. My head lamp has 3 settings, high , med & low. You know it's bad when the visibility on high is the same as low.

 

Bravo for starting out in the morning. Unfortunately conditions only deteriorated. Some other friends of mine attempted the Boulder route and made the same call.

[scot'teryx]

Time for a new headlamp

[jhflying]

When I passed your tents and no one was stirring, I thought, "hmm, maybe we should stay in our warm sleeping bags." But nooo, we made a push.

 

Primarily to shake down the newbies (going to Rainier next weekend) in more challenging weather circumstances. It worked since a few less-hardy dropped from Rainier.

 

What time did you guys go down? It was snowing hard when we booked outta there. But there must have been 40 climbers going up the trail. They must have had fun Sunday early AM.

 

John

[Hendershot]

No doubt a few Noobs got scarred. We did a crevasse rescue z-pulley exercise a week prior on the Easton and it pissed on us. I have never needed to have on 5 layers prior to than. We lost a couple from our Baker trip due to that experience.

 

We headed down around 9:30 am. Of course, visibility improved lower when the snow turned to rain. Our group on the Boulder route slept in till 11:30 and faced far worse conditions going down. Sounds like you dealt with the same BS.