Mt. Baring, NW Ridge
solo, March 17, 2004

When I found it in 75 Scrambles I got interested again. To be safe, I copied the route description from both 75 Scrambles, and CAG and CAG turned out to be a lot more useful in winter conditions. However, the drawing from Jeff Smoot's Climbing Washington's Mountains, which I didn't have at the time, would have been even better. In fact, that page, with a few altitude notations, would have been all I'd have needed to bring along.

Smoot's illustration of the route.

I dropped Peter off at school, and headed north on I-5, before I remembered that it’s quicker to go through Monroe. So I got off at 405 and headed south… into the gridlock. Pretty ghastly, so I left the freeway and meandered through north Woodinville, and eventually got onto the highway, turned off at Baring onto FS road 6024. I hit the trail at 10:40, kind of late.

The trailhead (2200 feet) is to the Barclay Creek trail, which descends down to the left, following the creek. The approach to Mt. Baring goes due east along the overgrown forest service road about a hundred yards, past a broad snowslide to a small creek (with a 2-foot-high cairn on the road.) And, the stream seemed to have a trail along it, so I headed up. It's a steep scramble, steep as the approach to Eldorado, but not nearly as dire a bushwhack as the start of Whitehorse.

The trail switches from one side of the stream to the other, at the bottom, before trending off a bit to the right up the ridge. There were occasional bits of flagging that helped keep track of the trail. Eventually, after about an hour, I got to the top of the ridge, at 4000’. From here, you head east along the ridgetop for about half a mile.

It would be a good idea to leave some sort of marker here at the point where you gain the ridge. There are a couple of trees with blazes, one very fresh, but if I hadn't been able to follow my footprints, I might have missed them on the return. Although you could probably get down a lot of places west of here, you REALLY don't want to be fumbling down this hillside in the dark.

I was pretty glad to have my snowshoes, since I was postholing pretty deeply without them. Probably a more appropriate staring time (like, say, 7:00 AM) would have given a more satisfactory snow surface and a much more pleasant hike through the woods. A couple of times I heard the train whistle from across the highway, sounding surprisingly close.

By the time I found the “steep forested gully” Fred describes, and was so sick of slogging through the trees and postholing through the snow that I was just about to give up on the whole thing, but decided to at least get up to the top of the gully. Where I found the rest of the climb laid out before me. It was beautiful, particularly after having spent such a long time in the trees and the slop. It was 2:30, a bit late, but I figured I ought to at least give it a shot, so I put my snowshoes back on, and headed down the hillside into the basin, then up the steep gully to the V-gap. The snow was pretty hard from the bottom of the basin up the gully, protected from the sun by the south summit of Baring. Climbing up this gully felt a lot like the SW Couloir of SEWS.

From here, I headed up the alarmingly steep slope on the left, still in my snowshoes, relying on the crampon teeth to grip and wishing I had my ice axe. Ski poles just don't feel very secure on such a steep wall. It's only bad for 20 feet or so, but it's enough to get your attention. From then on, it eases off considerably. I pushed on and on, following my nose, until I finally got to the summit! Boy, what a relief. It was a dead calm day, not a wisp of a breeze. I took a quick self-portrait, called Heidi on the cell phone (it took two tries to get through) and headed back down at 3:40, feeling the time pressure pretty accutely.

The descent from the upper mountain was probably slower than the climb had been; especially the steep slope, where I changed into my crampons and dearly wished for my ice axe. But I made it down, slowly, and once I was down in the gap, I headed back down the gully and back up the other side. By now it was 4:30, and I headed back. Almost at once I lost my footprints, and slogged on, trying to guess the distance to where I’d gained the ridge. I made a mistake, had to downclimb a difficult bit, and came across my footprints again. It’s been a long time since I’ve been that glad to see my own footprints.

I put my snowshoes back on and followed the footprints to the spot where I’d topped out on the ridge. By now it was 5:50. The alpenglow was on the mountains across the valley (Gunn Peak, Merchant Peak, and some subsidiary summits) and I descended as quickly as I could, plungestepping into the wet snow. Eventually I lost my footprints again, but continued down as quickly as I could, slipping and sliding down the dirt hills, as the light continued to fade. Finally I found my footprints again on a patch of snow, pretty happy to see them, and managed to follow the stream down to the fire road. The last ten minutes or so I went pretty slow, having a tough time picking out the way, and trying to figure out whether the rocks were slimy or just wet, and got to the road at 6:30.

Twice some sort of bird burst out from the trees on the left side of the road. The first time it really scared me; I though it must be an owl or something; but the second time I actually saw it, and it looked a good deal smaller. Got to the car and it was so dark I could hardly see it in the gloom.

Equipment notes: My MSR snowshoes were invaluable, but an ice axe would have been pretty handy too. I haven't been wearing my leather boots (Reichle Eigers) lately, since they've been making the balls of my feet hurt, but I went to Dan Page and got new gel insoles for them, and they worked great today. Thanks, Dan.

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