Baker + Wind = :/

By:  Sam
May 26, 2011


Last week I got a phone call from Joel Bettner, a friend of Dwyer. He was visiting from Colorado and wanted to get up Baker. I checked the forecast and, to my surprise, it was calling for sun. I’m in. Then I learned that Drew was coming along and wanted to ski steep stuff, I was eager to get redemption on the Coleman headwall, so this was good news.

Joel is out in WA on a Helly Hansen sponsored volcano skiing trip. He did a writeup of our adventure here


Drew and his friend Will, starting up the hill. At this point, we were hiking on frozen corn, and the day was still full of possibility.


Nearing the West side of the Coleman glacier, we met our companion for the day, Wind.


Wind was loading our line so much that it slid before our eyes, then reloaded. It was time to switch to plan C. (plan B was the North Ridge).


The Coleman was looking pretty filled in. The upper glacier was highly wind effected and quite spooky to skin across.


It’s always a bad sign when you can’t even see your line behind the snow that’s loading into it. By this point we’d given up on everything but the standard route.


We continued on and up.


Drew lead the way for most of the climb


The mighty Roman ramp


Though we didn’t get to ski our intended line, it was a very satisfying day. It’s always fun to get to the summit with first-timers, as the views are top-notch and everyone is always smiling.

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Read about the author:   Sam
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