While climbing Mt. Rainier is the
ultimate goal for students in OSAT’s Glacier Climbing Course, the actual
graduation for the course happens when you complete the Mt Baker climb.
Due to the large number of students in
the course this year, there were six different graduation climbs scheduled for
Mt Baker. Chris F. and I were slotted for the climb that started on Sunday,
June 30 and ended on Monday, July 1. The schedule for this climb was to meet at
the trailhead parking lot Sunday morning at 7:30, climb to basecamp, then start
the ascent to the summit that evening, with the goal of reaching the summit sometime
Monday morning, around sunrise.
Here's a topo of the path to the top:
There were two other teams from OSAT
who were climbing Mt Baker that weekend and both of those groups started
Saturday and summited Sunday morning. If all went according to schedule, we
would meet them at basecamp as we were arriving and as they were getting ready
to leave.
The weather forecast for the weekend
was fantastic – clear, sunny skies all weekend long.
I spent most of the day Saturday gathering up all my gear and making a few last minute tweaks to the tent.
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| Final preparations... |
In order to gain a couple of hours’
sleep, I spent Saturday night in a hotel in Burlington, Washington, with Jay,
who is one of the rope leaders for the weekend. This saved a couple of hours
and made it easier to get to the trailhead on time.
When I got to the room, Jay asked how
much the pack weighed. I told him it was about 58 pounds and he said I had to
lighten it up. There was no rain in the forecast so I could take out the hard
shell and the rain pants, the wide brimmed rain hat and a few other items. Jay
had brought along a portable scale and we weighed it again - 54 pounds. Still
too heavy but it was time to go to bed. I knew I could carry that weight -
after all, when we did the crevasse rescue a couple of weeks back, the pack was
over 60 pounds – so I wasn’t worried too much about it.
We got up at 5:00 Sunday morning, hit
the local Starbucks to fuel up, then hit the road to the Mt Baker trailhead.
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| Burlington Starbucks, elevation 120', 5:54 am |
I was in good spirits - the weather forecast
was for 90's in the lowlands and 40's to mid-50's for the summit. The skies
were clear.
It's 40 miles from I-5 (where the hotel
was) to the trail head parking lot. Jay and I arrived at 7 and there were
already a few others getting ready. Jay brought out his scale for the others to
weigh their packs. Everyone else was weighing in between 40-50 lbs. but mine
was back up to 58 (after adding the tent), so I opted to pour out a couple of
liters of water and just go with the 3 liter water reservoir that is built into
the pack. This saved about 4 1/2 lbs. Chris arrived and we split up the tent
between the packs and that saved a couple more pounds.
At 8, we all circled up, said the
serenity prayer, then headed out. It was already getting warm out. The trail to
base camp starts out in the woods and is fairly level. After about 45 minutes,
we came to a good sized creek, really more of a small river, that we had to cross. The
bridge had washed out years ago and was never rebuilt, so the crossing is
always a challenge. We found a well-used spot and walked across using logs and
boulder hopping. Due to the warm weather, the snowmelt was feeding the river
quite well, but little did we know how much more difficult it was going to be
on the way back down the next day.
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| Navigating my way across the creek, on the way up |
After crossing, we got a little lost
trying to find the trail on the other side. We bushwhacked around a bit and
that added another half hour or so to the hike. Mike, the climb leader, was finally
able to locate the trail again and it was smooth going from there on out. One
of the surprising things that I’ve learned about climbing mountains is the
amount of time and effort it takes just to get to basecamp. In the earlier days
at Everest, before there was an airstrip at Lukla, the climbers would have to
hike in 200 miles, with hundreds of sherpas carrying their gear. Getting to the
Baker basecamp wasn’t quite as bad as that, but sometimes it sure felt
like it.
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| Re-fueling on the way in |
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| Look, there's the top! First glimpse of the summit from down below |
We worked our way up through the woods
and snow fields till we hit the base of the Railroad Grade. This is the same
trail we took a couple of weeks back for the crevasse rescue weekend. Most of
the snow was gone from the Railroad Grade now, which only served to make it
scarier. It looked like the steppes of Mordor. I hate that damn ridge. It takes
about an hour to navigate it and it's nerve-wracking the whole way.
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| Railroad Grade, looking down into the valley. |
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| Taking a pause on the Railroad Grade |
We met up with the other OSAT groups while
on the ridge. They were coming down while we were heading up. They had all made
it to the summit and were in high spirits. They didn't even look very tired,
which was encouraging!
The group made it base camp by 1:00. We
had just a few short hours to set up tents and eat before going to bed by 5:00.
We chose a spot that had been vacated earlier that day so there were a lot of
nice tent spaces already dug out. Chris and I found a good spot and starting
setting up. The weather was fantastic - sunny, with almost no wind at all. It
was really beautiful up there. The summit was in plain view, and was cheerfully
looking down on us, beckoning us to come on up. Or daring us to give it a try. Not
sure which.
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| Setting up basecamp. elevation 6300' |
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| We'll be up there tomorrow morning (hopefully) |
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| Great weather! |
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| Feeling good at basecamp |
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| Always bring a younger tentmate, so they can dig holes while you take pictures of them digging holes |
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| My little tent, with Rachael's peace sign and the prayer flags flapping happily in the breeze |
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| Looking down at basecamp from above |
I
started in on the task of melting snow while Chris got things together in the
tent. We set up the stove in a small depression, on top of a rock to keep the
fuel canister away from the snow. I spent the next hour or so melting snow and
filtering it into the Nalgenes. We replenished all of the Nalgenes as well as
the water reservoirs in our packs - 8 liters in all between the two of us. This
still wasn't enough, as we both ran out of water the next day.
The climb leader (Mike) called everyone
together for a pre-climb meeting at 4:00. The weather was still great and we
were all quite confident that things would go well. He talked about how this
was going to be just like climbing Mailbox Peak - same elevation gain over the
same number of miles. I can tell you now, that is not the case…
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| Pre-climb meeting |
Mike divided us up into three rope teams.
Chris and I were on separate teams, which was a bummer. There were three
students and one rope leader in my group. The rope leader was Jay, which was
cool. We divided the rope into three equal sections then tied our prusiks onto
the rope so we wouldn’t have to deal with that later in the evening. Jay would
be in front, I was second on the rope, with two other guys behind me.
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| Ropes, prusiks and ice-axes all ready to go |
Chris and I started cooking up dinner
after that. Once again, it was instant rice and tuna. I had brought along some
mashed potatoes but we didn't get to them. I didn't even finish the rice. Around
4:45, we looked around and noticed that everyone else had already gone to bed.
Oops! We felt rushed to finish the meal and make final preparations. As it was,
we were in the tent by 5:30. It was time to get some rest, but there was a
small problem - it was HOT. The sun was beating down, I was fully dressed
(again, to make it easier to get a fast start later that evening) and I was in
my zero-degree down sleeping bag. There was no real breeze to speak of to cool
us down. Okay, this was not good. Mike had said we were to get up at 10 and be
ready to head out of camp by 11. Chris and I put on our neck gaiters over our
eyes to block out the sun and tried to rest.
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| Sunday afternoon, 5:30pm - the view from inside the tent |
I found it really hard to sleep.
My thighs and calves were sore from the walk up and I kept flexing my calves to
try to get some blood flowing into them to get them to heal a bit. But I sure
didn’t feel like sleeping. Over the next few hours, I kept checking my watch: 6:24...
7:10... 9:00, come on!!!…. It was one of those naps where it feels like you
get no real sleep at all, but I must have finally dozed off near the end because
I woke up at 10 and Chris was coming back in from outside. I hadn't heard him
leave. He said “Get up! You’re missing a great show!”. I sat up and unzipped my
side of the tent and saw that it was finally getting dark, the sun had just
gone down, and it was a beautiful sunset. Everyone was milling about getting
their gear on. The wind had picked up as the sun set and now it was a steady
30+ mph. Not gusting - just steady and strong.
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| Sunset, Sunday night, around 10:00pm |
I put on my boots and gaiters and tried
to get the stove lit to heat up some water for coffee and oatmeal. I wasn't
hungry but this was going to be a long day (really, really long) so it was important
to eat something. Because of the wind, the stove kept going out, which wasted
time. We finally got some warm water and I made some oatmeal soup (oops, a
little too much water...) and slurped it down as fast as I could. It was time
to get going! Put on the crampons, the harness and tie into the rope. Everyone
was yelling out to each other in the dark: “Do you have your glacier glasses?” “Extra
water?” “Sunscreen?” “Do you have your puffy?”. These were all things that we
would be needing later.
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| "Are you ready?" "I don't know... are you?" |
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| Basecamp, elevation 6300'. 11:22 pm, time to move out! |
There was still a little light in the sky when we
finally headed out at 11:45. My rope team was last, behind the two others. We
turned on all our headlamps and started out. This was it! It was a huge moment
for all of us and we knew it. 8 months of conditioning and 6 months of seminars
- all leading up to this moment. We were off!
It was eerie out there. The wind was
relentless, it was getting dark, and you could no longer see the outline of the
slopes around you. Mike, the climb leader, was out front. He had a very bright
headlamp (200 lumens, compared to the 100 lumens of a regular lamp). I could
see his light sweeping across the snow as he searched for the
path upwards. After a few minutes, we started running in to crevasses. The rope
leaders would yell out “Crevasse!”, then “Crossing!”, then “Clear!”. Each of us
would do the same as we neared the deep, dark gaping cracks in the snow. Some
were very small, maybe a foot across and only a couple of feet deep. Others seemed
like huge endless canyons that went off into the distance without end. The
larger ones were all black inside - there was no way to see the bottom. We skirted around the end of those ones. Most
were marked with small bamboo wands with little flags on them that had been
placed there by the climb leader or other guides, but others were not marked.
There was constant yelling back and forth - the wind made it hard to hear each
other. As we went up, it got darker and windier. We crossed several crevasses,
then Jay yelled back: "There are two crevasses up ahead. There's a snow
bridge on one but we'll need to jump the other".
WHAT??
Wait a minute. Its 1:00 am,
pitch dark, we're trudging uphill, I have a pack on, and we have to jump UPHILL
over a bottomless pit?
Cool.
You just don't think about it too much,
I guess.
When Jay got to the edge of the
crevasse, I walked forward a few steps to give him some slack in the rope, and
he easily jumped over it. I came up to it, asked the guy behind me to give
me some slack in the rope, yelled “Crossing!”, then jumped over. I made it
alright, but was disturbingly close to the far edge when I landed. The guy
behind me was even closer on his jump and the edge busted off a bit, making him
stumble, but he fell forward instead of backward so it was okay. The last guy,
Tom, who is a med student and in great shape, made it easily. We kept on going
into the night.
At around 1:30, things began to get a
little more… interesting. I had been
feeling increasingly tired, and so was snacking a lot and drinking lots of
water in an effort to get more energy. After the last snack, I had started feeling nauseous. Not too bad, but
enough to get my attention. The feeling of being tired quickly moved
into the feeling of exhaustion. All of a sudden, it felt as if my reserves were gone and there
was nothing left in the tank. We were just past 8000 feet. Not even
halfway. But I kept going. You pretty much have to.
About 30 minutes later, at 2:00 am,
we started slowing down while ascending a particularly steep hill. I heard the
radio crackle on Jay’s belt and heard Mike, the climb leader, say that a
student’s stomach was starting to bother him and we were going to slow down the
pace a bit. This student is a big young guy who looks like he's in really good
shape, but if he is telling Mike he needs to slow down due to a stomach ache,
then that's a very bad sign. You see, no one up there will admit they are
hurting until it's pretty much too late, because no one wants to be the reason
for a climb to be turned around. We went on another 5 minutes, then we stopped
all together. Mike told Jay and the other rope leader to keep coming up until
all three teams were alongside each other. The student’s condition had worsened.
He had the early signs of AMS, and we all knew that the only way to treat it is
to descend. As we got closer to the first rope team, I could make out a few
figures huddled over someone who was half sitting, half laying in the snow. I
could hear retching. The poor guy seemed to be throwing up now. Definitely AMS,
and he had to go back down. On these climbs, no one goes down alone, so a
leader had to go with him. This meant that the student and one of the leaders
had to untie from their rope teams, ties back in together, then head down to
base camp. This was at around 8300 feet – about halfway to the summit. Before
anyone untied, they made sure they had set pickets for belays and had people
clip into them before untying. As a rule, there is no time when you are not
secured to either a rope or a belay while on the glacier. It took about 30 minutes,
but they finally got the student and a leader roped up together and they got ready
to head down.
Mike yelled out to the rest of the group:
“Is there anyone else who doesn't feel well? Speak now so you can go with them, because if anyone else
needs to turn around later, then everyone will have to turn around. We don't have any more
leaders to spare!” Crap. I definitely didn't feel well but I wasn't going to
say anything. I had been feeling increasingly nauseous and less energetic. I
had stopped drinking water and eating snacks because I didn't want to make
things worse. You know that feeling of when you start burping every few minutes,
and you never know if by the next burp you'll be puking? That’s how I felt.
No one else spoke up, so we got ready
to start out again. Before heading out, Mike yelled back: “Let's pick up the
pace a bit to try to make up some time”
Awesome!
About 2:30, we ran into more crevasses.
There seemed to be quite a few together - people were yelling “Crevasse!
Crossing! Clear!” all over the place. We came up to one - it was probably the
third one in a row, that had a little snow bridge across it, with open cracks
on each wide. It was probably about 3 feet wide, and of course, you couldn't
see the bottom. Snow bridges are natural phenomenon - they are simply snow and
ice that haven’t melted away from covering the open crack yet. We are told to
always step in the previous persons’ steps when crossing these snow bridges. You
need to try to step lightly and go quickly until you're clear on the other
side. This one was no different, everyone was going across quickly. I followed
Jay and was walking in his footsteps. Stepped forward onto the snow bridge with
my left foot, but when I raised my right foot to step forward, which then put
all my weight on my left, the snow gave way and I fell straight down. Oh oh! This
was not good. I yelled “Falling!” and jammed my ice axe in the snow ahead of me
as I went down, hoping to hit the other side of the crevasse. I plunged down into the crevasse up to
my arms then stopped - the snow bridge hadn't completely collapsed - I had just
punched through the middle of it and had dropped down to my armpits. So there I
was, head and shoulders and arms above the snow, the rest of me dangling in the
open darkness below. I kicked my feet and couldn't feel anything. There was
nothing below. Jay yelled back that he was setting up a boot belay. I felt him
take up the slack on the rope and let me tell you that was a VERY reassuring
feeling. You see, from the crevasse rescue training we did a few weeks back, I
knew that the rope would hold me if the rest of the bridge gave way. Jay asked
if I could get out. I looked at the snow around me, and just by the light of
the headlamp, it didn't look very stable. It looked like it would fall away at
any moment. Jay said give it a try, so I started pulling myself up. I think my
pack must have prevented me from slipping all the way through, ‘cause I was
able to start pulling myself up by pulling on the head of the ice axe (which
was still buried firmly in the snow on the other side). I got out of the hole
and crawled on my hands and knees until I was clear of the crevasse, then stood
up and walked away from that damn thing. Wow. The others behind me seemed to
make it fine. Jay asked if I was alright and I said I don't know, I’m too tired
to worry about it. There were 6 other people who crossed that snow bridge
before I did, walking in the same footprints. I guess I was the lucky one. On
we went.
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| Sunrise, Monday morning, traversing across the Easton Glacier |
People kept talking about how I had
fallen into a crevasse. They all seemed to think it was a big deal. I guess it
was, but it didn't seem so at the time. There wasn’t any panic. Once I felt
that rope come tight, it was fine. If the rope was slack, it would have been a
different story. Thanks, Jay.
We finally came to Sherman Crater,
which is just over 9000'. That means it was just another 1500 feet or so to the
summit. We rested there for a while and ate some food. You could now smell the sulfur from open steam vents in the crater. Even with the wind, you couldn’t
get away from that smell, and that taste in the back of your throat. Over the
last hour, I had been slowing down, which in turn slowed down the whole group. The
nausea was still there but not getting worse, so maybe it wasn't AMS after all.
Just fatigue. Mike asked if I could make it - I said I didn’t know. He said
that they could leave me there at the wall of the crater in a sleeping bag
while the rest of the group continued on to the summit - he trusted me not to
do anything foolish like heading down on my own. That didn't sit well with me
so I said I’ll give it a shot. The sky was getting lighter by this time - it
was around 4:30.
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| View of the final 2000', taken on the way back down. Our path to the summit skirted along the rocks on the upper right. If you look closely, you can see little dots in the snow just below the rocks in the middle. That's another group of climbers. There is also another group closer by, on the right. |
We continued up. I tried to keep pace as
long as possible but it was not easy. It was getting steeper and I was pretty
tired. That damn hill seemed to go on and on.
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| Final approach, but still a long, long ways to go... |
Eventually, the lead group
disappeared over the top of the hill so I knew they were at the summit plateau.
At this point, we were over 10,000 feet and the wind had increased quite a bit.
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| Mt Baker, 10,700'. Sun rising over the hill just below the summit plateau. Only a few more feet to go... |
We finally crested the hill, and came out on a relatively flat plateau, about
the size of a soccer pitch. At the far side was a small mound which was the
true summit.
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| Plateau at the summit of Mt Baker. That little knob in the distance is the true summit |
Everyone was cheering but I didn’t feel
like celebrating much. Actually, I was dreading the idea of walking across that
little plateau and climbing that tiny little hill on the other side. We untied
from the climbing ropes and headed over to the summit.
Ours was the first group up there for
the day. Looking behind us, I saw a number of other teams coming up as well.
It was sunny, and really, really windy.
Probably 40 -45 mph, constant. We got to the top of the true summit and
everyone celebrated. I looked around and thought – “This is it? Well, that wasn’t
worth it”. That’s not a good thought man. There was a heck of a lot of training
and time spent to get here, but it really didn’t feel like that big of a deal
now that I was at the top.
I took out the camera and just pointed
it aimlessly and pushed the shutter button. I knew I should be taking pictures
- it was the summit after all - but I didn't care what they looked like. After
a few minutes of group photos, we went back down, then sat down to eat lunch. I
felt like I was too tired to eat but everyone kept throwing food at me telling
me to eat something. I did feel better after that, though.
It was 6:00 am on Monday morning and we were at the
summit of Mt Baker.
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| View of the plateau from the true summit, with other groups queuing up in the distance. You can see our shadows on the left :) |
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| At the top of Baker, with Chris F. We made it!!! |
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| "Okay, I'm a little tired now. Can we go?" |
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| Nice little crevasse forming at the summit |
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| One of Chris' boys was going to be celebrating his birthday on the 2nd, so he had this banner made for him. How cool is that? |
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| Our rope team (Jay is on the right). This is my favorite picture from the summit |
After about 20 minutes, we started back
down. Everything was so different now that it was fully light out. Basecamp
looked so far away!! I kept thinking: “I can't believe I went up this far when
I was this tired”. Base camp looked like it was miles away and I guess it was.
We stopped at Sherman Crater again to grab some food and check out the steam vents. Here's a video from there:
Going
the rest of the way down was relatively uneventful. We made it to basecamp by 11.
We rested an hour then broke camp and
started down with full packs by 1:00pm. First up was that stupid Railroad Grade again. I kept
telling myself: this is the last time I will ever go on this damn ridge. I guess
I had decided I wasn't going back up Baker and was now having serious doubts
about Rainier. It took another 5 hours to get to the cars. That was a long five
hours, man.
We came to the river crossing at around
5 that evening, and by this time it had swollen quite a bit. The
"bridge" from the earlier crossing was underwater, so we had to go downstream
a ways to find another place to cross. Of course this meant more stumbling on
the rocks and bushwhacking through the brush with packs weighing in close to 60 pounds. Needless to say, I was really tired at this point.
Mike found what looked to be a decent
place to cross, then he stretched a line across for us to hang on to as we
tried to avoid slipping in the rapids. The
cold water was kind of refreshing!
The parking lot finally came into view 6.
It was so nice to see my car! We dropped our packs at the cars, circled up one
last time, and congratulated each other on making the summit.
I made it back home by 8:30 Monday
night.
That was the end of a truly long day. We had started
climbing at 11:45 pm the previous night. I felt like I couldn't continue by 1:30 am, but kept
hiking for another 15 ½ hours AFTER that. How in the
world did can someone do that? You could say it was by taking one step at a time.
So, this is most likely the final entry
on this little blog. I really appreciate everyone's support - it's been amazing to share this with you all.
Because Baker was such a challenge for me, summiting Rainier
with OSAT this year is no longer an option. Mike called me Tuesday morning and
gave me that cheerful bit of news. It’s hard to describe how disappointing that felt.
Still, I’m glad to have taken this journey.
I’ve gained some really cool skills, found some new confidence, and made some friendships that hopefully will last a long time.
Thank you for reading,
-Scott
