Enough time has passed since I did this trip that the conditions I encountered will no longer be relevant. However, I wanted to write this review to give people a reality check on what hiking Mt. Baker entails.
I have been a day hiker and overnight backpacker for 40 years. This year I decided to expand my horizons to learn about mountaineering on glaciers. I read that Mt. Baker was a good "starter volcano" for someone like me. I hired a guide service that ensured I had all the proper gear and gave "snow school" at base camp before summiting.
We summited on Aug. 9th and started our descent down the Roman Wall. I was in the lead on the rope. Two other people being guided were after me, and the guide was in the back. I was following the footsteps of the trail we came up on. At first, I just thought I was post-holing. Then my leg fell a little deeper. Then my whole body fell through fifteen feet down into a crevasse. The snow that fell out from underneath me got wedged in and created a small platform for me to stand on. A foot to either side of me the crevasse went down so deep I couldn't see the bottom. Since I fell through and not over an edge, there was an overhang that made pulling me out much more difficult. Long story short, my guide and team did an amazing job and got me out. My guide emphasized to me that I did nothing wrong. It was just a bad case of being in the wrong place at the wrong time. Anyone would have been following the trail just like I was.
This was the scariest thing that has ever happened to me, and I am never stepping on a glacier ever again. My mountaineering friends tell me something like this is one in a million and that I shouldn't stop. My guide told me that, having taken people up for five years, this was the first time something like this had happened. Still, I just want to put this out there to make people take this summit seriously. There is a serious risk, and you should be aware of that.
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