Basic Glacier Climb - Mount Baker/Coleman Glacier

We arrived at Hogsback camp around 6pm Saturday. After setting up camp, dinner, and prepping ropes, everyone went to bed around 9pm and set alarms for 12:15am.

Our team of ten started our climb at 1:20am with some moonlight and partial cloud cover and mild temps. From base camp we climbed up the short ridge then roped up and traveled southeast towards Black Buttes. We wanted to keep a safe distance from the ridges due to rockfall/icefall danger with the warm temps, but we tracked a little too far north on an existing boot path. We shortly corrected and cut back onto the low route until passing the Black Buttes camp, after which we linked to the high route. We passed multiple small crevasses that were easily stepped over, and navigated a few snow bridges. The snow was soft so crampons were not used the entire climb.

Westerly winds picked up at dawn as we proceeded easterly to the 9200' saddle (11mph winds were recorded at Pan Dome station at 5020' at this time, and were much stronger at our altitude). Large icefalls were visible by Colfax Peak. From the saddle, we short roped and opted to take the rocky ridge northeast to the base of the Roman Wall. Winds felt to be 30+mph by the time we were on the Roman Wall. At the top eastern corner of the Roman Wall, teams encountered an icy section that needed to be crossed before gaining the summit plateau. We utilized hip belays in this section when needed. This area had a bottleneck with teams ascending/descending and everyone going through this one junction, so it added some time to our ascent. Due to the high winds, it was cold and exposed for lower rope teams waiting on the wall, so in the future I'd have teams wait near the top of the wall if a similar bottleneck occurs.

Once on top of the summit plateau there were a few hidden crevasses just a meter off the boot path and we had our footing pop through in a few spots, so it's important to remain roped up while on the plateau.

After a quick snack break and summit photo op at 7:45am, we descended the route. Snow conditions were better than expected and we didn't have to deal with deep post holing, but were very glad to be off the Roman Wall before warmer temps with a lot of other teams on the route. We were back to camp shortly after 11am. After breaking camp we left at 12:30pm for the cars. It was a stellar weekend and we had a great team!