AlpinWeiss Posted August 16, 2010 Posted August 16, 2010 Trip: Mt. Baker - North Ridge Climb, Coleman Deming Ski Date: 8/15/2010 Trip Report: Inspired by recent trip reports of this route we headed up it on Sunday. It's a beautiful route with some great alpine aesthetics. The wildflowers are out in force on Heliotrope which makes for some pretty camping. I'll keep this brief since there are other TRs with more detail: The "Hourglass" couloir which provides the shortcut route to the face has a big bergschrund open these days. It's probably possible to get around it but it looks sketchy. We took another shortcut just a little further towards the ridge which involved a little loose rock but saved a ton of time over going all the way to the lower part of the ridge: Up high the ice was ok: some good stuff, some slurpee consistency. There's a pitch an a half (90m) of real ice if you go the left (aka easy) variation. From there it's all snow. We left at 4am, were at the base of the ridge at 7:30 and the base of the ice at 10:30. Summitted at 2pm and skied down on soft corn. The ski down the CD was great - I had been starting to forget how much I like skiing. We took off the skis for to get over a little rock on Pumice ridge but otherwise skied straight to camp at 6,000'. There's some fun skiing over little crevasses down below Colfax. Gear Notes: We took 6 screws and used 5 of them (3 on pitch + anchor) - depending on your confidence on ice you could take more or less. Picket anchor on top of 2nd pitch. Approach Notes: Skis + boots on the back = heavy Quote
sash Posted August 16, 2010 Posted August 16, 2010 Some more climb notes: We were hoping to put on skis/skins from camp, but there were some icy bits + crevasses so we carried them instead. In the last 700' or so of (snow) climbing, the snow softened up enough that we were doing some postholing. Fortunately we got to put on skins + skis for the last hundred yards or so. Also, Fritschi binding brakes poking you in the back == no fun. Our GPS track: The wildflowers were amazing! Quote
spionin Posted August 16, 2010 Posted August 16, 2010 nicely done! that's amazing that the route is still in shape! Quote
yasso1am Posted August 17, 2010 Posted August 17, 2010 http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2444316&id=21723138&l=f1b7f8fb24 Follow for more photos of the climb for conditions. I was on the route with alpinweiss and his partner, great party to share the route with. Some of the photos are credited to alpinweiss and his partner. Quote
sash Posted August 17, 2010 Posted August 17, 2010 The route is indeed in great shape, but do watch out for the monster also seen by another party a couple of weeks ago: Quote
jambnet Posted August 19, 2010 Posted August 19, 2010 We did this route on Sat. Aug 14th with pro guides. Had trouble getting across the glacier to the base of hourglass, had to double back lower. We passed schrund by starting left and traverse under rock band out to hour glass. We had good snow and ice conditions on route. descent was soft and crevases have started to open. screws and pickets Quote
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