Placeholder Routes & Places

Trip Report    

Mount Baker/Easton Glacier

Sat, Jun 20, 2015 - Sun, Jun 21, 2015

On Saturday, 6/20/2015, we met at 6:00 am at the Ashway park and ride in Lynnwood to head up to Baker for a 2 day basic glacier climb with a team of 9 – 3 rope leads and 6 participants. We took three cars, for 9 climbers.

We arrived at the Sedro Woolley ranger station at 8:30 am. From there we headed to the Schrieber Lake trail head and arrived around 9:30. We started hiking around 10 and arrived at our camp at approximately 6200 feet. The trail was completely dry. Our camp site was dry and fit 6 tents without any problems (4 singles, 1 double, and one 3 person tent). We brought a shovel but never used it. We found water near our site and did not have to melt snow. After an early dinner, we setup the ropes with prussicks aiming for an alpine start of 12:30 PM.

We were up and ready to go as planned. We left camp at 12:40 with our crampons on. At about 6700 feet we discovered a group of tents in the snow which looked empty – I assumed that there was a party a head of us but did not see any head lights. It was very dark out and the stars where clear and shinning. We crossed several little crevasses. At about 8000 feet we meet up with a party of 9 and passed them.
At about 8700 feet (and 4:00am) we came to our first big open crevasse, we found a place to cross – shortly we encountered another big one. After some searching we found a way to cross it too, it was very narrow and thin. These two crevasse crossing may not last long and may make the route impassable. We were at the base of the Sherman peak around 5 and close to the base of the headwall. One of our rope leads had a bad stomach ache, so she hunkered down while we proceeded. We moved two climbers onto the long rope.
The head wall was very icy and steep and I would consider it a no fall zone. The snow was too hard for a picket. We summited at 8:00 AM.

Back down to camp around noon. We rested, packed, and left camp at 2:30 PM. We were to the cars at 4:30
We stopped in Sedro Woolley for dinner at Lorenzos.