Mt Baker is also known as Kulshan, which is a Lummi word indicating that the summit of the peak has been damaged, or blown off by an explosion. This is a pretty accurate description. Once you are up close enough to see the summit clearly, you can see that it has been blasted apart from ancient eruptions. Mt Baker is a scary mountain and I now have a lot more respect for it.
This last weekend was the Crevasse Rescue field trip, which is the final formal training session for the OSAT Glacier Climbing Course. The schedule for the weekend calls for a 4-5 hour hike from the parking lot to the Mt Baker basecamp, which is located at the base of the Easton Glacier. This glacier is on the southern slope of the mountain. Once there, we make camp, grab lunch, then spend the rest of Saturday and most of Sunday practicing mountaineering skills such as self-arrest with an ice axe, team arrest, the infamous Z-Pulley, and, finally, self prusiking out of a crevasse. We have worked on all of these techniques before, but this time we will be in a real crevasse, on a real glacier, on a real mountain. As with the hike to Muir, this is where it gets real.
The weekend started as all of these have before, frantically packing and re-packing the backpack Friday night. It was very important to make sure I didn’t forget anything. The course syllabus includes a list of things to bring, which helped as a sanity check. I get so caught up in the excitement of the pending climbs that I will often forget basic things, like a helmet or boots. Not good.
After getting everything squished in the pack, including the food and water, I weighed it on the bathroom scale: 56 lbs. Pretty good weight. This was without the climbing harness kit, since I thought we may have to put those on at the trailhead. The climbing harness, with all of its accompanying gear, probably weighs in at a little over 5 lbs.
By the way, a glacier climbing harness set includes the following: the harness itself, 3 short runners made from 1/2" webbing, one long runner, a chest harness, a pack harness, a personal anchor with a locking and non-locking carabiner, a large pear-shaped carabiner (aka pear-a-biner), foot prusik and harness prusik, pulley, hero loop, belay device, and at least 6 additional carabiners. That’s a lot of stuff hanging off that thing, which is why it weighs so much. Anyway, we did not put on harnesses until we reached basecamp, so I had to stuff the harness kit bag into the pack, bringing the total weight to 60+ lbs. for the morning hike.
Chris F. and I were carpooling again, and I picked him up at 5:00am, Saturday morning. We were supposed to be at the Mt Baker trailhead by 7:30am, and be all geared up and ready to go by 8:00. Since the bridge is still out on I-5 in Mt Vernon, we planned on taking a detour over to Highway 9 at around Sedro Wooley, and catch Highway 20 towards Mt Baker from there.
We were running a little late, but the nice thing about arriving after everyone else is that all of the ropes had already been distributed among the students so we didn’t have to carry that extra weight. Climbing ropes are heavy!
This is going to be the last time we are all together as a group. This is the last part of the GCC course and the only things remaining are the actual climbs up Maker and Rainier. No more training after this weekend - this is it. The group is now down to 46 students, meaning that only 14 have dropped since this all began in January. I think this low rate of dropouts has surprised the leaders. They have mentioned many times that this is by far the largest GCC class yet.
We circled up near the parking lot, said the Serenity Prayer, and headed out. The heavy pack was sitting well: all those miles of walking to work and back have allowed me to dial in the pack where it feels like a part of my body. There are no hot spots and it doesn’t weigh down on any one part, such as the shoulders or hips. This is good, because it was going to be a very long hike with more weight than I’ve ever carried before.
The hike to basecamp starts out fairly level, which is nice but that only means it will need to get a lot steeper before the end in order to hit our elevation. We walked up through the woods into a nice valley called Schreiber Meadow. There’s a good sized creek down the middle of this valley and it was still covered with snow in some places. After about an hour and a half, we came to the creek crossing. It was a snow bridge, and it looked was pretty thin. You could hear the water rushing beneath it. We were told to cross one at a time to minimize the chances of someone from breaking through and tumbling down the creek. That probably would have hurt a bit, to say nothing about how cold that water would be.
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| Crossing the snow bridge one at a time, while two guys (on the left, without packs) stand ready to rescue anyone who breaks through |
We all made it across without any drama then took a break on the other side. I was getting tired but holding up relatively well at this point.
After the crossing, we walked for another half hour or so until we came to the base of a steep hill leading up to a ridge. This ridge is called the Railroad Grade and leads all the way up to basecamp, which was our destination for the day.
We had to put on our climbing helmets at this point, since there had been a lot of rocks falling from the ridge top. We also put away the trekking poles and got out the ice axes, since the way up to the ridge was steep. I asked around and the consensus was that it was about a 50-55 degree slope. Doesn’t seem like much, but it is. Especially when you have 60 lbs. on your back, threatening to flip you over backwards if you stand up too straight.
We zigzagged up the slope most of the ways, using our ice axes (always on the uphill side) for stability. There were times that we went straight up though, and in those situations I used the axe in the self-arrest position. This is where you have the axe out in front of you, with both hands on the head, drive the shaft down into the snow to the hilt, take two steps up, pause, pull the axe out, then lean forward and drive it into the snow again. Repeat. A lot. And don’t look back.
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| This is a view of the Railroad Grade from the Easton Glacier. The Ridge on on the right. |
We made it to the top of the ridge and I was really hoping for a quick break but the leaders just kept on going. This is where it got hard. We were about 3 ½ hours into the hike and had just climbed a pretty good sized slope and were now on a ridge line that was about 10 feet across at the widest point and less than 2 feet across at the narrower points. And it was a steady incline. And did I mention that I was carrying 60 lbs?!?!?! I know, stop whining… The problem was that I had no idea how much further we had to go. The final destination was not in sight and folks were getting really tired. At this point, the negative thoughts started creeping in. I hate that. Again, I had to force myself to stand up tall, take a deep breath, and tell myself that this was simply a nice walk in the park. This worked for a little while but then I soon found myself hunched over again, nose to the ground, trudging along. This is not a good way to go.
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| This is me, nose to the ground, trudging along. |
After another hour, a few tents came into sight. Some of the leaders had come up the day before to scope things out. Man, I was glad to see those tents! There was a lot of whooping and hollering going on as people crested the final hill and we stumbled (well, I stumbled) into camp.
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| Mt Baker basecamp, with the summit in the background |
We were told we had 90 minutes to set up the tents and eat lunch. Chris and I started in on the site prep for the tent. There is actually a lot more to this than it seems. You not only need a reasonably flat spot for the tent, but you need to build little walls around the tent to deflect any wind, dig some holes with benches to make it easier to cook and put on boots and crampons, and stake out everything by burying stakes sideways in the snow. We’ve done this twice now (at Stevens Pass and now at Mt Baker) and admittedly we have a ways to go when it comes to tent site preparations. Walking around camp, there are some pretty fancy and functional sites. One thing I did do was dig out a 2 foot step down right outside the entry to my side of the tent. It has become very hard for me to get up off the ground anymore. It’s always an effort and it hurts my knees. So I dug out this step so I could swing my feet out of the tent, lower them into the hole, and step out that way.
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| Our humble tent. Note the step down outside the tent opening, next to the pack. This helps old guys like me climb out of the tent faster |
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| Grabbing a quick lunch after setting up the tent. And very happy to be able to sit down for a while! |
At 2:00, we all gathered up and were sent to one of three different stations: self-arrest/team arrest, z-pulley, or crevasse rescue. My little group was assigned to the z-pulley station, where we spent the next 4 hours (!) practicing this thing. Basecamp is at an elevation of around 5800 feet, so it’s not particularly high, but I found that I was constantly trying to catch my breath. That could be a problem.
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| View of basecamp, with students practicing z-pulley on the right and more groups practicing self and team arrest on the far hill |
Chris was assigned to a different team, and he was doing the self- and team-arrest stuff on the side of a hill next to basecamp.
The problem with that is that you get really wet, cause you are constantly diving into the snow. He got finished around 5:30, then his team was called up to be the final team for crevasse rescue. The crevasses are located on the Easton Glacier, so anyone going there was required to rope up with their climbing harness and tie into a rope before heading out. Chris did this and headed out of camp towards the glacier.
After finishing z-pulley practice, I hung out at camp, making water. Water is a real concern up here. You only want to carry so much. I carried 5 liters of water and was going through it very quickly. Chris had carried the same amount and was already out. (by the way, water weighs 1 kg per liter, which is about 2.2 pounds per liter. So we were carrying about 11 lbs. of water each). The point is that you will never want to carry enough water for the entire weekend so you need to find a way get make water. Fortunately, there is an infinite supply of water up there – the only problem is that it’s all frozen and infested with various contaminates that will assuredly make your weekend a hell of a lot more challenging if you ingest them. So, you need to not only melt the water but also treat it somehow. Common methods are boiling it, using a 1-micron pump filter, or a Steri-Pen, which is battery operated and somehow sterilizes the water just by dipping it in for a few seconds. We didn’t have a Steri-Pen or a filter, so I boiled the water using the trusty JetBoil stove. This worked great, but it took a long time and used up a lot of fuel. After 3 hours, I had filled up just 3 of the 32 oz. Nalgene bottles. I think I’ll pick up a filter for the next trip out – this way we won’t need to carry as much water or as much fuel. All you need to do then is melt the water then draw it through the filter. No need to heat it up to a boiling point.
Chris successfully navigated his way out othe crevasse and returned to camp after 8 that night. He had some great stories to tell! It sounded fun but also scary. We quickly fixed up dinner (instant rice and tuna chunks) then got ready for bed. The sun was setting around this time and it was beautiful.
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Sunset above the clouds at Mt Baker.
Is this a cool picture or what? Not mine though - it was taken by another student. |
We could just make out Mt Raininer between the cloud layers. Everyone took pictures.
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| Chris F. at Mt. Baker basecamp, with Mt. Rainier in the background |
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| Mt Rainier, from the slopes of Mt Baker |
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| View of the summit from basecamp, showing a few of the crevasses that need to be navigated on the way to the top. |
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| End of the Railroad Grade, showing the group's footsteps |
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| Obligatory selfie |
It had been a long day and we were definitely ready for some sleep! It was getting cold out – probably in the low 30’s at this point, but we were both pretty warm in our fancy sleeping bags.
Wake up call was 6:30 the next morning (they were letting us sleep in!).
Unfortunately, I was awoken around 4, when someone's watch alarm went off in the next tent over. I checked the time and tried to go back to sleep, but the snoring from all the other tents kept me awake. Some of those guys were LOUD. I really felt sorry for their tent mates. Good time for an iPod and headphones.
Our group was scheduled to do the crevasse rescue first thing Sunday morning, so we had to be all geared up by 7:30am. I started to get up around 5:45. It took a few minutes to work up the nerve to unzip the sleeping bag, then unzip the tent. It was cold out! Forecast was for a low of around 20 degrees overnight and there was certainly a lot of frost on the rainfly. But I had to pee really bad and that is always a good motivator for getting up.
Let me take a moment to talk about the "restroom" at basecamp. It’s essentially a small square pit dug into the snow, with a little snow-wall built up on the one side between the pit and the camp. And that’s it. You are out in the open. Wide, wide open. And in the snow. And your cold. And awfully uncomfortable. But you get used to it, eventually. I’ll try not to be too graphic, but you are required to bag up any solid waste and take it with you back down the hill. It's called "blue-bagging" since there are blue plastic bags made just for this purpose. Ick. It’s a rite of passage for the newbies to do this and everyone seems so proud when they finally sum up the courage to go #2 on the mountain. Whatever. Not me, man. No way. I am not going to do that....
I will say, however, that this little restroom area had the best view of any that I’ve ever been in…
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| View from the potty-pit |
I heated up some water for a quick breakfast of coffee and instant oatmeal. It was pretty good.
Then it was a quick scramble to clamp on the crampons and put on the climbing harness. I was having trouble moving for some reason. Could it be the cold, the tired muscles from the previous day’s activities, of the simple fact that I’m a 50 year old doing this for the first time?
I put the first crampon on wrong, and had trouble tying my boots properly. I did make sure that the harness was on right though. This, of all days, was the time that it mattered the most. That harness, and the ropes that I tied to it, would be the only things preventing me from tumbling down into a bottomless crevasse. I know that sounds kind of dramatic, but that is exactly the case (except, maybe, for the bottomless part).
M
y group was ready by 7:30 but the leaders were not so we hung out for about 45 minutes, getting colder and colder. One thing I have discovered about wearing crampons is that they are great thermal conductors. They suck up the frigid temps of the snow and transfer that to your feet very effectively. I felt my toes going numb so I kept wiggling them to keep them from getting too cold. Eventually, the leaders were ready and we all roped up to traverse the Easton Glacier to the lower icefall and crevasses. It was a short walk but it was full of excitement and anticipation. We reached the crevasse area after about 10 minutes and clipped our personal harnesses into the fixed line that was there before untying from the team rope. We were now on a glacier, about 20 feet above a crevasse, and from there on out we took every safety precaution imaginable to make sure everyone was always secured to a fixed line or on a rope team. The danger here is real.
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Crevasse rescue site, showing some students who have attached themselves to the fixed line, along with belayers (seated inside the fixed line) and spotters
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There were an couple of other student groups ahead of us, which left me time to assess what was happening. There were 4 or 5 different stations set up. Each station had a belay person who was sitting on a pad in the snow, crampons dug into the snow, working a belay line. This was the person who would be saving your life and preventing you from dropping all the way to the bottom. They were secured to the glacier by means of two pickets buried laterally in the snow. Each of these pickets can probably withstand about a 1,000 pounds of pull, so things were pretty secure. Next to the belay guy was a spotter, who would be at the edge of the crevasse, checking on you as you tried to climb out. This guy was also tied to a fixed line, which was in turned carabinered to the two pickets.
As I was waiting, one of the other students who had just climbed out said “well, that was worth $300”. I asked him what he meant and he said he had dropped his camera while taking pictures. Oops. I should point out here that while there is probably a bottom to the crevasse, you cannot see it. It disappears in to a black abyss. There’s no telling how far down it does. 100’? 1000’? That camera will be found in 100 years when the glacier has receded. More quickly if the Republicans are re-elected to the presidency. Ahem.
I was planning on taking some video while down there so I took out one of my short runners (which is just some ½” webbing tied into a 2 foot loop) and secured the camera strap to my chest harness carabiner. I then put it in the upper pocket of my jacket so it would be handy.
Soon, it was my turn to go in. Up until now, I hadn’t really seen the crevasse. They were keeping all the students well back from the edge. All I could see was the snow lip of the other side. They had me slide my carabiner across the fixed line to my station, where I was instructed to tie into the main rope (the one I would be using to climb out) then also tie into the belay rope. I tied both on using a figure-eight knot doubled back on itself, which is the standard knot to use when tying in to the end of a line. I then secured the tail end of the knot using a fisherman’s knot. Then came the foot prusik and harness prusik cords. These were the cords that I would be using to inch my way out of the crevasse, similar to an inchworm. I had practiced these knots dozens of times but this time, tying them correctly meant the difference between getting out of that crevasse or not. So I took my time and made sure they were right.
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| Rope tie-in, showing the foot prusik (green) and harness prusik (red) tied to the climbing rope (blue) |
After I was tied in, I was then instructed to walk up to the edge, sit down, and dangle my feet over the edge. Now I was getting my first glimpse of the crevasse, and holy crap was it scary.
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| This is me, sitting down, inching my way closer to the edge of the crevasse, with the spotter, Russell, (im)patiently waiting for me to go over the edge. |
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| Getting closer... |
It was probably about 15 feet wide at the top but it looked like it was 50. Looking at the far edge, I could see the different layers representing different years of snowfall on the glacier. A crevasse occurs when a glacier bends as it goes over an edge, and it splits apart at the top. It was smooth in some parts and very sharp looking in others. There was a jumble of ledges going down, but there was no bottom. It just disappeared into blackness. And I was sitting on the edge, getting ready to scoot off into the open air. It was a truly scary moment.
I must have trusted my knots, as well as the guy (Pete) who had my belay, because I scooted off the edge and turned around so I was facing the near edge. I fell for a few feet as the belay line stretched out a bit, then hung there over the edge. Pete began lowering me down – further and further. I hoped that he would stop but he kept lowering me down until I was about 20 feet in. As soon as I realized that the ropes were holding, I relaxed and was no longer really worried about dying, so I decided to look around a bit.
It was cold in there, and there was water dripping as the ice melted. You could hear distant creaking, far down deep. There were a few ledges but no clear bottom. If something fell, it would keep going for a while after bouncing off the ice shelves.
For this exercise, you are pretty much on your own. There’s no one telling you what to do to get out. While I was waiting my turn, I went over the steps in my head on what to do, so I was ready to go now that I was actually in there. The first thing to do is to clip my harness prusik (red line in the earlier picture), which was tied to the primary rope, to the carabiner on my chest harness. This helped keep me upright. I then took out the foot prusik (the green line) that has a loop for each foot already tied into it. I was able to slip those loops over each boot and crampon, which is an accomplishment in itself. I was now ready to begin the process of “prusiking” my way up.
I'll try to describe it here for you:
You have two prusik cords - the foot prusik and harness prusik. Both of these are wrapped around the climbing rope using prusik knots, which are friction knots that will hold under pressure and slide when there is no pressure. First step is to loop the foot prusik line under your feet, so you can essentially stand up on it while dangling in the air. You then remove the pressure from the harness prusik knot by stepping into those two loops and standing up on the rope. This may sound easy but it’s pretty tough. The foot prusik knot is now holding your weight on the primary rope, which gives you some slack on the upper knot which is the harness prusik, which is always tied above the foot prusik knot. You can then slide the harness prusik knot up the rope about a foot, then lean back against that cord, which then transfers the load to that knot. That’s the nature of a prusik knot – when there’s no load on it, it will slide freely up and down the rope it is tied to. When there is a load on it, it cinches down tight and will not move. And hopefully will not bind up either. Once your hanging with all your weight on the harness prusik, you lift up your feet, taking the load off the foot prusik, then slide that knot up underneath the harness prusik knot (but don’t let them touch, cause that will cause them to get all tangled, then you’re screwed). Repeat the process by standing up on the foot loops, thereby putting the load back on the foot prusik and taking the load off the harness prusik. Repeat this process until you have inched your way up to the edge of the crevasse, then scamper over the top using your crampons for footing.
Whew!
Before doing all of that, I took out the camera and took a quick video. It didn’t turn out that well, but here it is anyway.
I really have no idea how long it took to get out. I was not in a hurry. I wasn’t panicked. I just took my time. Actually, I couldn't hurry if I wanted to because it is very hard work doing this and I couldn’t do more than 2-3 prusiking sequences at a time without leaning back and resting. Russell, the guy who was leaning over the edge keeping an eye on me, kept asking me if I was lollygagging. I shouted back that I was resting. Next time I stopped, he shouted down: “is that resting or lollygagging?” I guess he didn’t want me to do any lollygagging.
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| Russell: "Are you done lollygagging down there?" |
I was kind of enjoying the scenery, but it was really nice to get out. Everyone at the top, belayers, spotters, and students waiting their turn, all cheered every time someone made it out. It was pretty cool.
That was so much fun!!! It felt pretty good to get out, but it was a lot of fun to be in there too.
After returning to basecamp, the group got together and spent an hour doing self arrest and team arrest, using our ice axes. We’ve done this a few times before but never on as steep a slope. The self arrest part is straightforward, but the team ones were more interesting. We had three people all roped up together, climbing a steep hill, and the one of the bottom end would start running the opposite direction, yelling “Falling!”, with the intent of taking the front two climbers by surprise. It was kind of fun but also rather dangerous, because people were being literally yanked off their feet backwards. Then they would have to twist over and use their ice axe to stop the person running the other direction. Everyone was able to do this. It’s surprising how well an ice axe will dig into the snow as you are laying on top of it and applying full force. When the front two climbers feel the tug and hear the third guy yell, they both hit the ground and bury the axe in the snow. The lead climber checks to make sure the middle person is able to hold the weight of the fallen climber. Then lead climber then gets up slowly and works their way back to check on the person who has fallen. Meanwhile, the middle climber remains face down in the snow, with their body weight on the ice axe, making sure they don’t slip as the person below them keeps pulling backwards. It gets instense.
We were done by 1 or so, and fixed up some lunch (an apple and PB&J). We then had to wait for all of the other students to finish their activities. This left us with a couple of hours of downtime. The sun was shining and it was getting nice and warm out. Chris and I packed up all our stuff except the tent, air matresses and sleeping bags, then we crashed out in the tent for a while. It felt great to sit back and relax, and do nothing. Nothing at all. The view outside the tent was incredible. There was no wind. I could have stayed there forever. It was very peaceful.
Eventually everyone finished and we started packing up the tents. The group was ready to go back down the mountain by 4. We circled up again, and the leaders said a few words to the group. This was going to be the last time we were all together, since on the climbs, we only go 12 to a group. There is no more training to be done. This was it. We said the serenity prayer, and closed with the traditional OSAT ending: “Keep climbing moiuntains and don’t slip!”. It was a pretty cool sight, with about 80 people circled up, on a snowfield, in the shadow of the summit, all praying together out loud. Kinda cool indeed.
Going back down was not as easy as we hoped. Navigating the Railroad Grade ridge was scary, but at least it was physically easier this time since we were going downhill.
When it came time to descend that steep hill where we had to switch to ice axes on the way up, many of the students as well as the instructors opted to glissade down it. This was a frightening proposition, since it is quite steep and long. I glissaded down and it was a real rush! I was going so fast! It was a thrill, for sure. Everyone waited at the bottom as the rest of the students either walked down or glissaded down.
We made it to the parking lot by 7:30pm, Sunday night. We were really tired and anxious to get back home to our families. We did stop at a Five Guys Burgers near Smokey Point, and that burger tasted great. Finally rolled into Seattle at around 10:30pm. It felt good to be home.
In closing -
This was a great weekend. It felt like a real achievement to be able to carry that much weight that far, and still have the energy to do a full weekend's worth of work up there. However, for the summit climb (on June 30), we will do the same hike up to basecamp with a full pack, make camp, eat, then go to bed by 4 or 5 in the afternoon. We’ll then get up at 10:30pm that night and will need to be ready to head to the summit by midnight. The summit climb will be far steeper than the climb to basecamp. I am quite worried about how I’ll do in that scenario.
The next few weeks will be spent working on my endurance and keeping up on the overall conditioning. There may be a couple long hikes thrown in there too.
I hope everyone is doing well. Thank you for reading this thing and sharing in my little adventure!
-Scott
