Basic Glacier Climb - Colfax Peak

Trip Report

First of all the road - the access road has some serious potholes so drive carefully there, especially if you don't have a high clearance vehicle.

We started walking at 2:50 am. The route starts identical to Baker's Coleman Deming climb until the ridge at 9,000 ft, where if you turn left you would climb Mount Baker and if you turn right you will climb towards Colfax Peak.

So the entire first section of the climb has plenty of good reports and it's pretty straightforward. One thing I would note, the stream crossings in the dark were a little less trivial than we expected. Making sure you bring Gaiters and an extra pair of socks would not be a bad idea.

Once hitting the aformentioned ridge at 9,000 ft, the route to Colfax Peak is no longer straightforward and requires some decision making.

After carefully looking at the terrain ahead, we picked the more northern route that had no visible crevasses or other hazards. However, it was pretty steep. Our rope leats placed a couple of pickets along the way to make it safer for our group to climb.

After climbing a couple of steep pitches, we arrived at what we were certain was the summit. However, a quick check in our navigation app revealed that the summit has quite a way ahead, and would require a pretty steep descent followed by a pretty steep Ascent. Again, we had to weigh our options to find the safest way to descend.

One of our rope leads anchored and then safely rapelled to look better at the options for moving ahead. He found out that if we continue straight and also on climber's right was a pretty steep cliff, so we ruled out that option. On climber's left was a very steep but possible way down so we decided to take it. Our rope lead anchored a picket and we used it to start descending. It was pretty steep and a part of it required self-belay with an ice axe but overall felt safe.

Then we reached the next ridge and this time we could see the real Colfax Peak summit. The way to it was looking very steep but when we started taking it it wasn't too bad.

We were finally at the summit at 11:30 am but it was very windy and the snow was getting very soft so we didn't stay long and started descending.

At this point, the snow has softened quite a bit and the descent involved a lot of post holing. Two of our group members fell into small crevasses, but luckily nothing happened. They were able to get out easily by themselves.

We were back at the cars at about 4:00 p.m. about 13 hours and 10 minutes after we started.

On the drive back on the access road I saw a big bear running into the woods .

Strava link where you can download the gpx recording:

 https://strava.app.link/flNEBzP0NTb

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