Mount Baker and Coleman Glacier

This will be my last post for a few days. Edward and I leave early tomorrow morning for our Mount Baker climb. We’ll be meeting our guide and the rest of the group in Bellingham and will be heading from there to the Heliotrope Ridge trailhead in Mount Baker-Snoqualmie National Forest. Tomorrow we hike with packs two miles and 1000 feet of elevation to the end of the Heliotrope Ridge trail and then another mile and another 1000 feet of elevation to our campsite near Coleman Glacier. Saturday morning we start early (around 1:00 am) and hike another nine miles across Coleman Glacier and up another 5500 feet of elevation to the summit. After spending time at the summit we hike all the way back down (approx. 12 miles), retrieving our backpacks and camping gear on the way down. I’ve been training hard for this and am looking forward to it, but am also somewhat apprehensive, since besides a climb of Long’s Peak years ago this is something I’ve never done before.

This is the description of the climb on the website of the company providing our guide: Mount Baker, with its huge glaciers and lofty size dominate the landscape for over a hundred miles in all directions. This fire breathing mountain is home to the thickest sheets of ice in the contiguous 48 states making this climb one to remember. Our climb starts with full packs in temperate rain-forests. The hike then takes us up and up into gradually changing ecosystems until we reach the sub-alpine Hog’s Back. Here we bathe in views of the Coleman and Roosevelt glaciers with the Canadian Coast range to the North as we set camp. On summit day we rise early and rope up. From camp to the top the climb is spent entirely on glacier. We climb the Coleman glacier while traversing under the steep rock walls and ice cliffs of the Black-Buttes. This takes us to the Roman Slope where we gain big views to the south and climb the last 1,500 feet to the summit which is 10,770 feet of elevation.