RHH's photos with the keyword: black buttes

Another couple photos from our autumn hike to Park Butte on the southwest side of Mount Baker.

Hiking the Park Butte and Railroad Grade trails, Mount Baker had been hidden in the clouds the whole time, but began to clear as I reached the glacial moraine known as Railroad Grade and was soon completely free of clouds. In the photo, the peak is at the far right with Easton Glacier below it and Railroad Grade curving up from the left. The sharply pointed peaks at the left are the Black Buttes, the more rounded peak near the center, Colfax Peak and the slope between Colfax and Baker the Roman Slope. When we climbed Baker we came from the other side of the Black Buttes, camping there on Coleman Glacier and climbing through the notch and up the Roman Slope, all much steeper than it appears in this photo.

Lincoln Peak lies to the southwest of Mount Baker with the Black Buttes between it and Baker. I was still on my way to Park Butte and this was all I could see. Baker and the Black Buttes were hidden in the clouds and it would become even cloudier before it started to clear.

This was taken early in the morning on the second day of our Mount Baker Climb. At this point we were still crossing and climbing Coleman Glacier and had been climbing for over an hour and half with the Black Buttes (see previous photo) on our right and Mount Baker ahead and to the east. When this picture was taken the sun was just coming up behind Mount Baker to the east (in the opposite direction from the picture). We were looking back west and taking pictures of the sunrise colors in the sky over Puget Sound and the San Juan Islands when this shot was taken. We did not recognize it at the time, but this is the shadow of Mount Baker being thrown many miles away on the western horizon by the rising sun. A friend who saw this picture pointed that out.

We reached this point in our climb at about 4:00 pm. This relatively flat area of Coleman Glacier is known as the Football Field, and it was there we set up camp and spent the night in the shadow of the Black Buttes, a ragged ridge of crumbly rock that runs to the southwest from Mount Baker. The sun as it went down highlighted them and watching the light on them was part of a very enjoyable evening spent in expectation of next day's climbing.