North Ridge of Mt. Baker

With our Liberty Ridge climb dashed by unstable weather and those pesky jobs, Nick Strait and myself got stoked for the North Ridge of Baker.  A couple text messages later we had plans to leave Seattle around 3pm Tuesday afternoon, catch some ZZZZ's at the Heliotrope TH and then charge up the trail early Wednesday morning.

First view of the magnificent volcano

"The Turtle" Nick's awesome Volkswagon van rode out the bumps up forest road 39 with no problem.  Completing the long drive we settled in with some magazines and books, setting the alarm for 2am the next morning. 

We reluctantly dragged ourselves out of our warm sleeping bags around 3am.  After gnawing on some cold snickers bars and a couple swigs of water, we called it good and hit the trail with the headlamps in action. Instantly we came to the first of three river crossings.  Which turned out to be a moderately terrifying crossing in the dark, on wet slippery logs and boulders, while knowing that a dip in the frigid waters would could potentially end the climb. 

Views North from trail

Snow started to be consistent around 4700 feet and soon we were on the Coleman Glacier traversing east to the toe of the North Ridge

Run out of the Coleman. Some of those Seracs look ready for some ice craggin! 

Cruising! Running water everywhere!

Navigating some big gnarly crevasses luckily we avoided all dead-ends! Woo!

Approaching the North Ridge Schrund. Looks like a go on the right!

Up on the ridge looking up at the ice step!

Nick working his way up around to meet me on the rock ledge

We reached the ice step which Nick had originally intended to lead but feeling a little pooped he handed the reigns to me. I had never lead any ice before but figured it was time to step up to the plate! It looked pretty intense and I was legit scared! 

Now for the steep part!

Probably cursing at an ice screw here

Topped out! woo!

Nick followed me up in fine style, a high five and we headed up the last 1,500 feet to the summit plateau. We climbed straight up and skirted around a huge serac then made an easy traverse to meet up with the last bit of the Coleman-Deming route where Nick, a 10+ summiteer of Baker opted to chill out and take a nap, while I trudged up to the little summit bump for a picture. 

Summit!

Views of Shuksan!

We made an easy descent of the Coleman-Deming glacier route and found ourselves back on the Heliotrope trail back to the trailhead

Ending views to the North again