Fred and Michael hiking through the flowers.
Mt Baker, Coleman Glacier
Saturday/Sunday, August 16/17, 2003.. With Fred and Michael
On the drive up the road, coming around the corner, we saw a bear running across the road. It looked, in the glimpse I got, like a skinny Newf. Still, it’s probably the only bear I’ll see in the wild in my life.
So we packed up, parked the car, and headed out. Michael made reasonably good time, but he was slowing down about the time we got to the tree line, so a couple of times I went ahead, dropped my pack, and came back to take his for a bit. The trail is REALLY steep before you get to the snowfield. We stopped there for lunch for a while. There was a lot of people there already, a good dozen or so tents there on the rocks (a LONG summit day, I’d think) including a girl who Michael thought was about 15.
The really notable thing about the outing was the wildflowers – they were everywhere, and just gorgeous.
Ate lunch, roped up, and headed up onto the glacier. It was far more crevassed than I’d remembered it the last two times; with Russ, I’d hardly remembered any crevasses at all. But we didn’t have any problems, and eventually got up to the rock wall and found a good tent site. In retrospect, we should have gone another half hour up; it might have made for a better summit day.
We carved out our tent platforms and set up the tents, which took a good long time, and cooked up dinner, which took another long time. While the water was heating, I did a little climbing up around on the rocks by the tent. I’d imagined that I could see over the top and maybe all the was south, or at least the Twin Sisters range, but I couldn’t see much at all. But it was fun, and I was surprised at how secure I felt in those plastic boots. Standing on a 1/4" lip feels like a ledge. I guess it looked scarier to them than it did to me.
Then, to bed. I called Jennifer and talked to her a minute, and Heidi, to let her know I was okay, and let the Smiths call home.
I didn’t sleep all that well, really, flopping around. Fred said he’d heard me snoring, though, and I know I did get some sleep. The problem seems to be that if I sleep in the sleeping bag, my bottom arm goes to sleep.
So, we got up about 4:00, and were hiking by 5:00, and it was light enough that we didn’t need headlamps at all. We followed the boot track up, up, up, stopping occasionally for snacks or a clothing adjustment.
At the saddle, it was pretty windy, and once again, Michael got pretty chilled. We started up the cleaver, but eventually Fred decided that Michael had to stop. It was unfortunate; the sun was up, and even though it was windy, probably in 15 minutes or so in the sun would have fixed him right up. So I went ahead and summitted. It turned out to be pretty icy at spots up there towards the summit, but I summitted right around noon. No summit book though, and no evidence of where it might have been. Oh, well. Took a couple of photos, called Heidi (I had service for a good 30 seconds) and headed down.
Descending the upper Demming was pretty dicy. It reminded me of 4th class rock – much more troublesome to descend than to climb. There were patches of water ice that were pretty obnoxious to traverse. I went pretty slow, and by the time I was down with Fred and Michael, it’d taken me as long to descend as to climb.
Fred was pretty quiet; we roped up and headed back down to our tent, and packed up and headed out. Once again, I was really demoralized by the weight of the pack, but once I got it up on my shoulders, it was fine.
The hike out was slow; descending the steep rocky portion between the snow and the treeline was pretty dreary. I stopped for Fred and Michael a couple of times, but towards the end I just jetted to the car, changed (it always feels SO good to get out of my boots!) and waited for Fred and Michael.
We drove out, stopping at the ranger station to sign out, and in Bellingham, we ate at Applebees. The beef fajitas and the 20-oz beer really hit the spot. I recommend it highly.
Fred drove all the way home, and it was awfully nice to lay back and close my eyes.