Great warm sunny day. Problaly the last of the season. About 2 dozen people on the trail. Saw several climbers coming off mount baker. Also bears are out all day now eating. Colors are starting to turn.

After a quick jaunt around Artist's Point, headed toward Mt Baker along the Ptarmigan Ridge trail. I took this trail once before, a dozen years ago, at which time I ended on a dead-end after less than two miles. This time the myriad of boot paths were clearly marked and I made it to Camp Kiser below Coleman Pinnacle. I encountered only a couple snow patches along the way - otherwise the trail was in good shape. My turn-around point was the small green lake below (south) of Coleman Pinnacle. Fall colors in the underbrush vividly blazed against the dark tones of the mountains.

We were at Artist Point at 6:15 am to watch the sunrise and see Baker turn pink. We chose Ptarmigan because the last two times we came here, it was 100% clouds with a 75% chance of even more clouds. After the sunrise, we hoofed down the trail to Ptarmigan Ridge. After a tricky decent down a slick hard snowfield right at the parking lot, we were on our way. Within 15 minutes, we spotted our first marmot. Earliest. Marmot. Ever. Later on, we had a photo shoot with an adorable baby marmot right on the trail. We probably had 20-25 minutes of ""critter delay"" in total. Lots of marmots. There was also a marmot that kept whistle-squeaking, sort of like a car alarm. He wouldn't stop until one of his marmot buddies told him to shut up. If you want to see them, go early. The blueberries are out too. Sweet ones too. There's a small number of snowfields to cross on the way to the Coleman Pinnacle, but none of them are very difficult, especially when they turn softer later in the day. But at 7-8:30 am, they're kind of slick. The Pinnacle is a great place to stop, but if you continue on the trail as it winds back behind the Pinnacle, you leave everyone else behind and enter lunar landscapes and crazy flower fields. The trail eventually stops on the top of the edge of one of the Portals, where spectacular views and chipmunks await. We were absotively posulutely alone out there, and it was fantastic. We left the trailhead at 6:45, hit the end of the trail by 11:30. Spent an hour snacking at the top, then headed down. In the 2.5 hours it took us to get down, we passed 150 people on the trail. Never mind the throngs at the parking lot. No bugs to speak of, a nice breeze kept them away. But be smart and wear sunscreen. It's all exposed, and you'll fry on a clear day.

Headed up to Ptarmigan Ridge on Mt. Baker on Wednesday for yet another mountain goat helicopter survey. The road to Artist Point is not yet open past the upper Heather Meadows parking lot, although the road and Artist Point parking lot have nearly been cleared by two bulldozers that were up there working while we were there. Maybe it'll be opened within the next couple weeks, though the snow definetely won't be melted yet... Technically, the Ptarmigan Ridge trail starts right in the big pile of snow that the dozers have piled up at the far end of the lot. This is blocky and unstable though so it's probably easier to hike up and around to the right on naturally fallen snow. The treeless section of the trail traversing the side of Table Mountain is mostly snow free although with a couple moderately steep patches, and rotting snow bridge that must be descended around (20 feet or so). Things are changing fast however. We started late in the day and camped at the saddle at the far end of Table Mountain. Although there had been high clouds all day, we had a beautiful sunset, fortelling of the very calm, and very hot weather to come. On Thursday morning, we dawdled a little bit, waiting for the snow to soften up (we did not carry ice axes because my partner didn't know how to use one). Sure enough, the short stretch of snow just beyond our camp proved to be too steep and run out for us, particularly because it was shaded much of the morning. Ice axes pretty much still required for this part of the trip, although I doubt they would be needed anywhere else. The basin beyond was still entirely full of snow, but from there on the trail passes onto south facing slopes with hip high meadows later in summer, so I would assume that much of it is snowfree. Still, the bit of steep snow kept us back and we mostly lounged around in the shade until after dinner when we made our way back to Artist Ridge near the parking lot for the night (with a better view of the local goat habitat). The helicopter came in the morning, bright and early and we completed the survey in reasonably good time, but that still didn't save us from the heat of today, though I'm sure it got plenty worse. The bugs were around, but tolerable. The mosquitoes didn't seem to know how to bite yet. Because of the snow, I wouldn't really consider this trail open to hikers yet. The other trails in the Heather Meadows/Artist Point area seemed to be approxomately half snow covered, and are not really open yet either, although this very warm weather could change that very quickly.

Coleman Pinnacle has been on my to-do list for some time. I was in the area several years back but didn’t complete the trip due to weather. On that trip the weather was so marginal we never did see any of the surrounding mountains or the big ones nearby. This trip was completely different. I managed to convince two frequent companions (PeggyG and Trailcat) to join me on this ski trip even though it was a long drive and more importantly, even though I was (and still am) a novice skier. We met on the north end of town at 6:30am and after a short Starbucks run managed to get to the parking to at Baker and started up the snowy road by 10am. Thankfully, with the sunny weather forecast we all remember to liberally apply the SPF before leaving! The route had us following the road up to Artist Point where it ends and then transitions to a trail. At about 5000 (with no snow) there is a trail junction. Heading right (north) takes one up Table Mtn. Our route had as following the left (easterly) trail as it a slow arching traverse around the south slopes of Table Mtn. For the most part I think our route in the snow had us below the trail. On this first traverse we could see the remains of several small shallow avalanches. With the nicely consolidated snow and the early hour we felt it was safe to continue so off we went on our adventure. Due west of Huntoon Point there is a small saddle on Ptarmigan Ridge which is where we crossed over the ridge the first time. It’s also here that we got our first eye gawking view of Coleman Pinnacle and Mt Baker. Wow. Coleman Pinnacle looked like a small sharkfin on the ridge. It was a ways away but we knew we’d make decent progress on the skis. From this pass we dropped over onto the NW side of the ridge and began yet another traverse. This one was a long one. The snow was hard. The slope was moderately steep, and there were cornices on the ridge crest way above our heads. No dilly dallying here. We continued on until we again crossed over the ridge east of Pt 5831. From here we began our 3rd traverse on the ridge (SE side). We were down below the trail so it had us doing a moderately steep rising traverse up the bowl (about 300’) where we rounded the south side of the pinnacle, and stopping at a saddle (about 6160’). Getting up to this saddle had steep zig-zag traverses up a very large snowfield. It was absolutely amazing getting up to this saddle. Trailcat did it all on skis. Peggy and I did the last 30’ in boots. Peggy elected to not summit because she was hungry. Trailcat and I dropped our packs and quickly headed up to the summit (the NW side of which was heavily corniced). We stayed in the trees and managed to find a class 2-2+ route up to the summit. We didn’t stay long since while the days are getting longer we still had a long way out and the snow was sure to be getting soft. So it was a quick trip back down to Peggy and our packs. For the most part we followed our track out. The one exception was traverse across the south side of Table Mtn. We had followed our tracks from the morning. But about half way across the slope I heard Trailcat in front of me yell something like “look at that!” A ways in front of him was a slow moving slurry of a mess of an avalanche moving downhill. It sounded like a slushy Slurpy moving downhill. Even thought it was small, slow moving, and shallow we didn’t want to continue to push our luck so we dropped way down into the basin to be safer. We were back to the car by about 6pm. Stats: 13+ miles, 3800’+ gain, 8 hours (including summit time).