[TR] Mt Baker - Coleman Headwall 10/21/2010

[shannonpahl]

Trip: Mt Baker - Coleman Headwall

 

Date: 10/21/2010

 

Trip Report:

 

On Wednesday and Thursday last week, Franklin, Cary and myself climbedd the Coleman headwall. The character of the climb is much different than early season, making it more of a challenging varied and satisfying mountaineering and ice climbing experience. The glacier crossing to the base of the climb at this time of year requires careful navigation, so a carryover is needed to get the daylight hours needed to plot a way through the crevasses. Wednesday night would be dry and warm (about 30F at 8k), so I just added a sleeping bag and pad to my pack, and planned on melting ice on route to reduce carrying the weight of a full days water supply. I tried this climb last year, spending too much time to find a way through the glacier crossing. Thanks to those leassons, this year, the glacier crossing went smoothly.

 

The climbers' trail to the ridge leads to a flat spot. From there, we went up to the snow slopes directly above. Its here that you get the first views of the route. We went slightly right, around the invisible crevasse field directly infront of us. As you snake around this field, you can get a good view of the level traverse (at about 6700) that leads through the maize. A somewhat more level and less broken ridge took us through to the next open slopes. From here, we continued over the next ridge and only then started going up the smooth slopes, around a small clump of seracs up to another open serac which is where we bivied. This is about the highest and safest bivy spot before the climb (at about 7800). Bivying within the serac shielded us from the wind and made a fine dwelling.

 

 

Bivy at 7800 ft.

 

The next day, another 1100 feet of gain lead us to the base of the climb. We chose the left Coleman flow and on the left side of the flow but not all the way on the left. Approaching the base of the climb, there were a few small pellets of rock coming down. After a short yet vertical step, we setup a belay. Two excellent pitches (50m rope) of steep WI3 lead to another WI2 pitch which started the rightward traverse to the clever. While we were making our way through the top of the third pitch, a large ice fall came down on the left edge of the Coleman, which luckily only showered us with remanant ice spray. In hindsight, the cold week-end temps gave way to warmer mid week temps which should be a warming sign for possible ice falls. My initial thought was the ice cliffs were probably unstable but there was no good escape route, going back down the way we came could put us through that line of ice fall. The best way was up and the planned sharp right traverse into the right Coleman flow. Another pitch on and another ice fall, this time from the distant ice cliffs directly above. Now it was time to traverse and start simul climbing to get into the safer right flow. This section went by fast and easily. Not long after that, we were near the base of the exit slope. Another short vertical step gave way to steeper firm snow/ice slopes. Pickets and ice screws worked well for the simul climbing, where occationally I found good ice blocks for screws.

 

 

 

Now there were two more concerns - limited daylight hours (knowing that the descent also required light to get through more large open crevasse fields), and the anticipated bad weather later in the day. We got to the summit about 4:30 in a total whiteout and high winds. The weather was coming in. With our light carryover packs and a cold and wet night ahead, I quickly dispensed of the option to bivy another night, so the race was on to get down and through the crevasses in the light. I had the Coleman-Demming route on my GPS that I had done earlier in the year, and so we easily got through downclimbing the roman wall in the whiteout. At this point we got below the clouds and could see the ridge and lower crevasses that we needed to pass through in the one hour of light remaining. We hopped over small two foot cracks, jumped one 6 foot wide gaper, and belayed through an even wider gaper using the remaining snowbridge. The final weaving went by just after it got dark, and then we were back on our incoming GPS track. Now we could relax and just follow the track home.

 

 

 

More pix are here:

 

http://picasaweb.google.com/shannonpahl/ColemanHeadwall

Edited October 26, 2010 by shannonpahl

[YocumRidge]

Very cool, guys !

 

How was ice on that WI3 pitch?

 

Looks like bivying within the crevasses is a common practice for approaching the Coleman HW : http://cascadeclimbers.com/forum/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=443768

[JasonG]

Yowza. If the ice had fallen earlier in the day, would you have been wiped out? I've never liked the look of that left side route on the headwall, the right side was spicy enough for me . .. nice work though.

[KaskadskyjKozak]

 

Nice job as usual, Shannon!

[rob]

Excellent.

[DPS]

Nice work. One question (not a criticism) why did you choose the left hand lobe over the right hand lobe? From your photos it looks like the right hand lobe is not as threatened by seracs.

[shannonpahl]

The two WI3 picthes were awesome. Good sticks, good pro. The left lobe had more longer sections of ice.

Edited October 26, 2010 by shannonpahl

[Gaucho Argentino]

Great climb, Dudes !!

[Whatcomboy]

Sounds like a great climb. I would love to get up Baker late season. You guys just beat the big snow dump. Baker was looking beautiful Friday from my house with fresh stuff.