Unfortunately, only Edmond and myself could make this climb, but with the weather due to change at the end of the weekend, it was probably going to be the last opportunity to attempt Mt Baker this year. So with blue skies and a clear night expected and much debate over whether to take along our Alpha Hike wings with the forecast north westerly at 20kts due to blow up the Palisades Valley we set off from the Heliotrope Ridge Car Park. About 2 hours later we arrived at Hogsback Camp just below the Coleman Glacier, just in t
ime for a beautiful sunset and watch the mountain change to an extraordinary shade of orange before fading into the darkness. This was to be my first ever bivvy experience and I must say I was rather sceptical as to how you could actually stay warm, particularly with the temperature due to drop below zero over night. However, I was amazed as to just how warm you become inside your sleeping bag, inside a bivvy bag. So much so, I found myself wriggling and twisting for many minutes shedding layers of clothing inside my bag, until I was at a comfortable temperature and really snug. But can somebody tell me why, it's only when you get to this stage..... you need to get up and pee!When Edmond told me it was finally time to get up, I complained, I was so comfortable and amazingly he agreed to an extra 10 minutes, I think he was just as cozy and really didn't relish the thought of getting up either.
We decided to leave what we could at the bivvy site and take our wings, just in case the wind was in our favour fu
rther up the mountain and finally set off at 0430 under a beautiful clear sky. Edmond took the lead, but initially it proved very difficult to find a way through the many crevasses across the route. We doubled back many times to try a different route and finally achieved most success by heading to the far west of the glacier then paralleling the Heliotrope Ridge up the glacier. The crevasses en route were spectacular, but some of the snow bridges looked rather unsafe, which resulted in more detours. All the way up the glacier the wind was blowing down from the summit, an almost perpetual katabatic wind which would obviously make for a very difficult take off, so as we progressed up the mountain, the chance of a flight down was looking extremely slim. We gave ourselves a cut off time of 1100am, where ever we were at that time we decided we would turn around and start our climb down, particularly because of the difficulty of the route back around the crevasses. Just as the clock struck 1100am, we arrived at the Roman Wall, a climb which had taken six and a half hours to ascend just 3000'. We took in the view, both north and south, tucked into our nuts, raisins, chocolate fudge cake.....and cheese (guess who had the cheese) and contemplated the route down as the wind continued to blow down from the summit, albeit light. That's when an ingenious Frenchman hatched a cunning plan.
Right where we had our lunch was a snow dome, about 30 metres across, which meant you could actually face into the breeze blowing down from the summit with a small take off run in front of you down hill from the dome. So, we talked it through and had plans in place for an aborted take off and a place to land further down the glacier if we encountered sink en route, with a final LZ planned at our bivvy site conveniently marked with a ski pole complete with pink streamer. Edmond kited his wing as final proof of the take off run .....but then I lost the toss and went first! A great reverse launch followed with a rather loud 'Yee Hah' saw me
heading out over the glacier with plenty of height and very smooth air. We maintained comms throughout via GMRS and the streamer at the LZ proved useful as the planned up hill landing did show a slight head wind. Up hill was really the only option, so it was always going to be a heavy landing, but a roll on touch down absorbed a lot of the impact. Edmond flew a very similar profile arriving over the LZ very high and also experienced a heavy, but safe landing.We found out later that we were the only climbers on the mountain on that Sunday, another team that set off around 0400am gave up as they couldn't find away through the crevasses.
Overall a great experience for myself, disappointing yes, as we didn't get close to the summit, but the flight over the glacier sure made up for that short fall. I guess I'll just have to head back there next year!
- Jerry Mason
