North Ridge Mt. Baker

I definitely slacked on trip reports in 2015. The major one was my climb of the North Ridge of Mt. Baker in Washington. Here's a quick synopsis and some pics.

I met up with Matt late morning on our approach day. The forecast looked a little shaky but we hoped there would be a weather window tomorrow to summit in. Needless to say I had the goretex quickly accessible for the hike in on day 1. We sorted group gear then hit the trail as quickly as possible. The climb is usually done in 2 days with the first camp being just off of the Coleman Glacier. However, with the questionable weather, we opted to get as high on the ridge as we could the first day in case climbing on the second was slower than anticipated.

We made good time early. I do love hiking in the Pacific Northwest, so many trees.

After several miles, I could see the tree line and the Coleman Glacier ahead. It also started raining so out the hard shells came. I would pretty much have my hard shell on for the remainder of the trip.

We continued up the Coleman Glacier until we started encountering heavy crevasse fields before roping up. There were quite a few people camped just below the Coleman waiting out the wet weather. This is the traditional camp site for our route (as we pushed higher on day one), as well as for the more traditional summit route (our descent route). 

We kept climbing and traversing to our left trying to gain the ridge proper, before finding a nice protected spot on a rock band to bivy for the night. 

Got an early predawn start on summit and started up the North Ridge. We had steep snow slopes early which turned into about 4 pitches of ice. Absolutely wonderful climbing.

We had actually had some discussion about the weather that morning and if we should turn back or not. It was precipitating most of the morning, but as we climbed higher we cleared the clouds to blue skies!

Summit!


We made quick work of our descent down the standard Coleman Glacier Route. Once we were back in the clouds though we were rained on all the way back to the vehicles. Normal PNW weather!

Great route, great climb. I'm glad we pushed it with the weather, ended up being perfect on the more difficult climbing sections.