Beta wanted Baker Coleman-Deming

[Buckshot]

Has anyone been up that way lately? We are looking to go there in mid-August.

[Nate G]

Took my girlfriend up for the first time on Friday and Saturday, we made the summit but the route is way different than usual years. Rather than going straight up to the football field and over to the black beautes the route goes around (to the right if you are looking up from hogs back) of heliotrope ridge, then descends into the edge of the football field basin and continues around staying as high and close to the black beautes as possible.....it then does a bunch if switchbacks to avoid crevasses until you hit the pumice ridge. Pumice ridge on it looks like normal conditions but everything below looks way worse than a normal late, hot august. Even with all the craziness of the boot pack there was only one 3 foot crevasse to jump.....so just count on the route being longer than usual and no camping on the football field like normal. Someone did camp under the black beautes alongside the bootpack I wouldn't recommend this due to roackfall danger....good luck!

[APE]

I climbed the route on Saturday, and it's in great condition. Bridges were solid. Conditions are late summer / early fall, so expect bare ice on the lower part of the glacier. There were only two notable objective hazards: we saw a car-sized chunk of ice calve off the bottom of the Coleman while we were getting on the glacier around 3-something am, and there is a large chunk of ice below Colfax that may not be long for this world. In the photo, it's the smaller and lower of the two striped portions above the icefall / debris field. The current boot track passes through the bottom of the debris field.

 

Low on the route, we took a route a little less circuitous than it sounds like Nate G did. There are several viable options up there right now. Message me if you want a GPS track.