Mount Baker (Coleman/Demming), good first climb?

[TankMasterFlex]

I'm glad to have found this board, lots of great info!

 

3 friends and I with experience outdoor rock climbing, many multi day hiking trips, and limited experience mountaineering (never been on a glacier... so never practiced crevasse rescue) were thinking of trying the coleman/demming route on baker this may long weekend.

 

Basically, I'm just wondering if this is a decent first climb? Our plan was to camp for a few nights at the end of the trail just before the glacier. We were going to find some areas to practice crevasse rescue, self arrests etc... Our plan was 2 roped teams of 2.

 

We've all done quite a bit of reading (freedom of the hills, alpine climbing by the mountaineers, and am currently reading self rescues by the mountaineers). We've taken AST-1.

 

I realize the road to the trailhead is closed, but we were planning on parking at the closure and hiking it.

 

What do you all think? We definitely don't want to get in over our heads, but at the same time want something that will be a bit of a challenge. Ideally we would take a course, but we're all poor students... Thanks for any advice you have.

Edited May 5, 2009 by TankMasterFlex

[Choada_Boy]

Sounds perfect. Take your time to work things out, then go for the top.

[ivan]

2 pics of me n' my buddies - we did some of our first climbs on the CD, and taught ourselves crevasse rescue in the sweet-jesus-almighty big cracks to be found there - enjoy!

my mother's favorite

[jshamster]

Be aware that the road is washed out 1 mile in.

This adds approx. 7 miles of additional hiking, on a paved road.

August is the estimated time of repair.

 

Cheers.

Jimbo

[TankMasterFlex]

Thanks for your input!

[MisterMo]

CD on Baker was my first volcano snow slog way back when. I think it's one of the prettiest such climbs and a great choice for beginners.

 

Become very good at self arrest on the hardest snow you can find.

 

Have a ball.

 

 

 

 

[AlpineK]

CD on Baker was my first volcano snow slog way back when

 

Me too.

 

Prior to that I'd done a bunch of steep snow to practice arresting, and crevasse rescue practice.