Mt. Baker, Coleman-Deming Ski

March 1-2, 2004

Paul Belitz, Jeff Manor

I haven't been doing much lately. Two weekends of lift skiing, and two weekends of sitting on my rear. When I heard of Jeff, Sky, and Ben's plans to climb the Coleman Headwall and ski either that or the Coleman-Deming during the nice weather window of Monday and Tuesday, I decided that classes could take a back seat for once, I had to SKI.

The plan kept changing. Originally, Jeff and I were going to skin up to the glacier Monday night, Sky and Ben would do a one day push, meeting us on the glacier, and we'd climb the headwall together. Sky called while we were driving up, and told us that he and Ben were heading to Eldorado rather than Baker. We could have applied the same strategy to Eldo, but Jeff was set on Baker. So Baker it was.

After stopping in Bellingham to buy a rope and cut it in half (Sky was supposed to bring his, and we needed a rope) we got to the end of the drivable road at 5. We were walking in fifteen minutes, and got to the trailhead an hour later. It was dark, but the moon was out and the sky was clear as we headed into the woods.

Seven hours of skinning later we were up on the glacier, under the aforementioned brilliant moon. We shovelled the powder away to reveal a crust, and got into the bags as quickly as possible. Jeff's little cartridge stove didn't like the cold and refused to start, so we couldn't even consider cooking. I slept well despite cold feet, and had recharged by 8:00. We dressed, jammed feet into frozen boots, roped up, and headed up the glacier.

Baker from our bivy.

We unroped upon reaching a skin track, which, while drifted in for the most part, we followed to the saddle. The wind was very strong on the Roman Wall, explaining the preponderance of rime ice and other nastiness. In a few places I wished for the crampons I had left back at camp, but for the most part it was easily hikeable. Jeff didn't care much about the summit, so he stopped in the lee of a rime-covered rock while I pressed ahead, hell-bent on summitting. Dave and Sky skied this route in a day last winter, even if I couldn't do it in a day, I had to summit at the very least, right? I crested the headwall wallowing in deep snow, thoroughly whipped. I couldn't have been more than 100 vertical feet from the summit, so I tried skinning. No use. I had told Jeff that I would turn around by 3, and I was tired enough that getting anywhere would have taken too long. A few pictures and I reverted to skiing mode.

Jeff during the traverse.

I express my displeasure at not summitting.

The Roman Wall was horrible, as I knew it would be. I tried to jump turn the slush, but it was futile. The ice was uneven, hard, and treacherous. I reverted to the time tested method of kick turns and traverses, with a stem christy or two when the snow was less miserable. Soon enough I found Jeff near the saddle, and we headed down into powder nirvana.

Jeff ripping it up beneath the cool part of Baker.

Me, coming down the slope to our bivy.

Some dude with an orange pack in a gully during the descent.