[TR] Baker - Coleman - Deming 3/9/2013

[TobiasT]

Trip: Baker - Coleman - Deming

 

Date: 3/9/2013

 

Trip Report:

My buddy Jason and I skied the Coleman - Deming route to the summit yesterday under great weather. We left Seattle at 2:45am and started skinning at about 1800ft at 5:30am from the Sno-park lot. Clear skies and nearly continuous snow meant little need for headlamps.

 

We left the road 2 hrs later at an outhouse on the left side of the road near 3800 feet and headed up the Grouse Creek drainage and up the second drainage to the southeast around 4700 ft, where we caught up with a party of 3 we'd been behind for awhile. There were 2 parties and a soloist in front of us from the parking lot and we were very grateful to have that skin track already in place.

 

 

 

Once on the Heliotrope Ridge it was calm and clear, and the snow appeared to be great. We were already getting psyched for the way down. I'd not been up there before and I was surprised how low-angle the Coleman glacier is. Lots of really pleasant and moderate travel brought us to the saddle at 9000 ft at 1pm.

From there it got windy and chunky. We packed skis up to the top of the Roman Wall, where we ditched packs and skinned across the crater to the true summit, arriving at 3pm.

 

The ski descent of the head wall involved some jump turns, and was not pleasant skiing, but never felt too sketchy. We generally followed the route up on the way out. All the way back down to the Grouse Creek drainage was great skiing in 6-12 inches of light, stable snow on a firm base. We stayed near the tracks of those who'd descended before us and generally felt that crevasses were easily avoided with some caution and careful route choice. Definitely an inspiring day in the mountains for us. We were back to the car around 5:30pm.

 

 

 

 

Gear Notes:

Took a light rope, crampons, and axe but never broke any of it out.

 

Approach Notes:

It was tough to find out where the sno park lot was going to be, and we didn't really know where it was until we got there.

Edited March 11, 2013 by TobiasT

[dave schultz]

Looks like a stellar outing. Almost 10k in vertical is impressive. Congrats.

[JensHolsten]

Beautiful

[Rafael_H]

Hey, Tobias, good to see you getting out.

Was there any ice on Colfax?

[PeakBeggar]

You're welcome for the skin track! We were the first up that day (party of three), the skin track was only lightly buried for us however. It appeared a party had summited the day before. Awesome times up there! What a gorgeous day, one could not ask for better snow or weather! (ok, maybe a bit less wind on top...)

 

 

[dougd]

1730 is very close to beer thirty...

 

Nice work!

[TobiasT]

Hey Raf! There was some good looking ice on Colfax but it looked discontinuous. I don't know the routes on that peak but I didn't see any clean and continuous ice lines on the north side. Hope you're making it out some these days too.

 

Yeah thanks for that track Peakbeggar. I thought I froze part of my face on the summit. really, really windy up there.