Mount Baker climb:
Climbers/rope team: Three
Approach: alpine style one day push
Start: 12:30am, Sat June 26th.
Route: Coleman Deming
We were targeting a tight window of good sunny weather. The climb started with clear skies and reasonable wind albeit very cold.
Rope team worked well and efficiently together. We gained 5700 feet elevation and roundtrip distance of 10.9 miles in 7 hours total moving time and 11 hours total trip time.
As we reached elevation 9000 feet, it became clear that his majesty Baker did not want us that day. We started climbing in total whiteout with high wind. We could not see any of Baker features at this point. Multiple parties started showing up climbing down after turning around and not summitting because of high wind at the ridge before Roman Wall.
While we could have continued the climb and try our luck, we erred to the side of caution and decided not to risk it given multiple reasons.
As we climbed down there were mixed moments of clear skies, rain, and clouds. It was clearly a difficult day to climb Baker
Lessons learnt: one day push is definitely more enjoyable to members of this group than camping overnight. That’s how we thought before we went and was confirmed during our trip. We made it to Hogsback camp in less than 2 hrs carrying relatively lighter packs. When we reached elevation 9000 feet (with only 1700 feet remaining) we were only little after 6 hrs from starting at TH despite being first time on rope together.
Early start: while the early start might made us miss the brief windows of clear skies, it worked perfectly in regards to allowing enough time to summit in appropriate snow conditions. When we go again, I will still aim for midnight start.
Major benefit: the experience on the mountain was amazing. The snow travel using crampons and ice axe worked perfectly despite solid snow early morning.
But the highest benefit of all was construction of a rope team from three who never climbed together before. We worked efficiently and appropriately all the times and communications were perfect. To me this is more of value than summitting Baker since we have potentials for many other climbs to come.
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