[TR] Kulshan - Indian Summer 9/11-&-13/2009

[danhelmstadter]

Trip: Kulshan - Indian Summer

 

Date: 9/11/2009

 

Trip Report:

Indian Summers are always pleasant, but even more so when they set in after a spell of winter... I was hiking the other day in the hills outside Bellingham when the clouds broke and revealed a white Mount Baker, the temptation was too much - even though this summer I have been trying to stay away from the absurd end of summer skiing that I have dipped into in summers past. But if Baker is white, then it must be good right?

 

I left around 10:30am and enjoyed the pleasant and uncrowded hike up. I love hiking the Railroad Grade, such a cool trail. Upon reaching the glacier, I found 1 to 2 feet of wetish consolidating new snow above 6.5k. There was a bootpack too, made by two or three climbers, I soon found their track to be a little spicy -- they apparently liked to leap crevasses, but I found it more appropriate than blazing my own.

 

There is something more terrifying about a deep crevasse which depths is touched by the sun, than a crevasse which veils it's depths in darkness. The deep crevasse with a dark bottom is somehow mysterious -- maybe there is a soft bed of snow and maybe the walls gently taper so that they would break your fall.... but the deep crevasse which is illuminated hides nothing, jagged ice fragments clearly visible 90 feet down... I found one such crevasse on the way up, and the bridge was made from new snow, to top that - the bridge had a hole in it - reveling it's thin nature. I am a little dumb, but I'm no fool... The crevasse - despite it's deep nature, was not too wide, and I was pretty sure the other side was composed of solid mature snow, and it was.-(2:59)

 

The climbers had doubled back a little above 8k, I could see why, the route ahead did not look promising -- very broken and crevasse riddled. I decided to throw on my skins and get as high as I could without any foolish solo glacier shenanigans. I was able to get to about 9k before running into a gigantic crevasse which connected with other crevasses successfully prohibiting my advance.

The snow quality on the descent was a little grabby if I had to bitch about something, but really it was pretty good. I had recently rubbed on some fresh wax, and could tell this helped a lot in terms of ski performance, but I became slower and slower as the wax wore off with elevation loss. The texture of snow, the condition of my bases, and the nature of angle coupled together to set a definite speed limit for me.

 

This video is kind of boring - being pretty much all low angle glacier, but I was still super stoked to ski such quality snow this time of year. There is some cool action around 2:20, 4:20, and 4:45, and the music is pretty cool.

 

 

[video:youtube]

 

Sunday the thirteenth I set out from the Heliotrope Ridge parking area around 1130am and got to 10.5k about 4 and a half hours later. The route is in excellent condition - except for a massive moat at the top of the Roman Wall. I lunched there - by the edge of the moat, and melted some delicious new wet snow; the combined sound of my jetboil's flame with the numerous cascades and trickles of water falling off the rockband deep into the moat in such a surreal windless setting was a pleasant and somewhat odd experience - especially when the noise was accented by deep booming sounds as the nearly constant rockfall (some of it basketball sized) rolled off the rockband/mudramp and crashed into the opposing glacier ice deep in the moat.

 

The moat can currently easily be passed by an ice bridge, but the rotten, very wet, mud/choss anchored ice fragments on the other side of the moat, helped me to decide to ski down from there, besides - there was very little snow above the rock band. I could easily stick my pole into a couple feet of freshish slush, but it skied surprisingly well, and I got some really cool semi-exposed skiing in on the north side of the cleaver.

 

Unfortunately, I neglected to replace my helmet-cam batteries since my last trip, and the camera died a few seconds after I put it on, a damn shame too, cause the footage of all the sluffs would have been cool, I did have some extra batteries and replaced them at the col.

 

The rest of the route was really fun low angle cruising snow/terrain - except for the last bit of glacier which was soft snice - (and a little fun slush skiing at 5:53 into the video)

 

[video:youtube]

 

 

Edited September 15, 2009 by danhelmstadter

[johnson]

gooood stuff!!

[Frikadeller]

Fuuuucccckkkk!!! I NEED to ride some snow, and SOON! This post/video reminds me of that.

 

 

Thanks!

[t_rutl]

sick!

[AllYouCanEat]

Heck yeah!!! Love it.

[JoshK]

Cooool!! Watching that bridge crossing at 2:20 actually made me tense up a little. Baker certainly does have some impressively large crevasses.

[cbcbd]

Right on! And the music is way cool!