Mt. Baker Ski Ascent via Squak Glacier

Mt. Baker via Squak Glacer

10,781’

7000′ gain

5200’ skiable vert

Mt. Baker has been staring me in the face for months, ever since I started hiking Central Cascades peaks again. Rising almost straight out of the ocean from some viewpoints, Baker towers over the North Cascades with one of the most extensive glacier systems in the lower 48 states. While nearly 4,000’ lower than its neighbor Mt. Rainier, prodigious snowfall more than makes up for the difference when it comes to ice and snow.

Baker’s south side

This trip was lead by Radka and Chris, a couple of instructors with the Mountaineers glacier ski and snowboard travel course. This was the second year that they had agreed to lead a trip for recent graduates of the course like myself, and I had to take advantage of the opportunity. (See C&R’s turns-all-year trip report)

Mt. Baker made me a little nervous as a ski objective. There were a lot of “news” associated with this trip: first time summiting a glaciated peak, first time skiing on a glacier unroped, first time wearing crampons with my ski boots, first time climbing on steep snow as a rope team. Most of all, I was concerned about my admittedly not awesome skiing ability when considering the “Roman Wall” on the upper mountain. I had skied to 30 degrees steepness on Mt. Adams with no trouble, but under icy or hard snow conditions, the 35 to 40 degree Roman Wall would be some of the tougher skiing I’d ever done outside the resort, and with pretty terrible consequences in the event of a fall. This kept me thinking twice about whether I should join the trip, but ultimately I resolved to go along, knowing that I could hang out at the summit crater and wait for the rest of the group to summit and come back down if I didn’t like the looks of the conditions.

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McClellan Butte

McClellan Butte

5162’

3400’ gain

Class 3 scramble (easy but very exposed)

This weekend the weather wasn’t looking promising anywhere, so I hopped on Summitpost to see what was around I-90 that I hadn’t been to the top of yet. I was planning on running a mountain just as a workout even if I couldn’t see anything from the top in the clouds. McClellan Butte had been on my radar for a while – I had seen it in every proximity search but never clicked through to the page. Once I saw folks describing the route as a scramble at Class 3 or even Class 4 I knew that I had to give it a shot.

The trailhead is relatively close to Seattle, right at Exit 42. This was my first time checking out the south side of the valley but it all looks fairly similar. McClellan Butte’s trail gains elevation fairly gradually for the first couple of miles, crossing the John Wayne rail-trail at just before the one mile mark.

John Wayne trail

After the road crossing, the route gently pitches up until I ended up walking some of the steeper upper sections (the whole thing is runnable, I’m just not in my best shape right now). The upper mountain started to drizzle on me.

Cloudy hillside

After mile 4 or so, the trail crests a ridge and juts to the (south?) in order to avoid some cliffs. It traverses along the upper mountain until reaching the final summit scramble.

Cliffy from here (the route curves around to the much easier opposite side)

Mountaineers Glacier Skiing/Crevasse Rescue Course

I signed up for the Mountaineers ski crevasse rescue class which ended up being a really worthwhile way to spend a few weekday evenings and a weekend field trip. We learned about basic glacier travel, route finding, and especially crevasse rescue pulley systems. The purpose of learning the system is to be able to haul a potentially injured skier out of a crevasse on a rope using mechanical force advantage.

For our field trip we spent a rainy Saturday refreshing self arrest skills and practicing roped travel in Paradise environs at Mt. Rainier. On Sunday we spent a beautiful sunny day hauling each other out of a real-life crevasse on the Nisqually! Here are a few shots:

Our practice site on the Nisqually Glacier

Skinning above the cloud layer on Rainier!

Mt. Adams Ski Mountaineering

[Cross-posted in part from Turns-All-Year]

Mt. Adams South Rib

12,280′

6700′ gain (6000′ skiable)

Becca (a classmate from the Mountaineers ski/snowboard mountaineering class) and I headed up Mt. Adams from the parking lot at Cold Springs to take advantage of the beautiful weather window and no permit fees yet. This would be my second climb of Adam’s – after a trip on foot in 2012, I was really savoring the idea of a ski descent.

We arrived from Seattle after a 5 hour drive through Portland  at about 9:30pm and crashed for a very short time.

Frozen glaze at sunrise

We headed out at around 3am thinking the snow would get soft and sloppy early in the morning given the warm night. The first ~mile and few hundred feeet were on dirt but we hit continuous snow at 6000′, transitioned to skis, and found that the snow froze harder under the clear skies than we were expecting; a breakable glaze covered everything and made skinning a bit challenging, especially on the steeper sections. As we skinned up Suksdorf Ridge we got pulled a little bit too high below South Butte in the dark and had to backtrack a bit to regain the line.

The beautiful South Face

Kaleetan Peak

Kaleetan Peak

~4500′ gain

~12 miles

With a beautiful sunny weekend ahead, Ryan and I set out to do some spring snow climbing and chose a prominent summit in the Snoqualmie Pass area, Kaleetan Peak (meaning “Arrow” in the Chinook language). With the shockingly low snowpack this year, we weren’t exactly sure what sort of conditions we would encounter.

We opted for a lazy alpine start of 6am leaving from the Denny Creek trailhead in order to minimize the already-small risk of wet loose avalanches on the descent (in warm afternoon conditions, “solar” aspects can often become destabilized).

Our plan was to ascend the peak via an East facing couloir to access the normal scrambling route from there to the summit. We packed for non-technical snow climbing including ice axe and crampons, both of which turned out to be essential on this route in these conditions.

The Denny Creek trail to the pass is very pleasant – dense forest, waterfalls, and nice views down the valley as the trail gradually gains elevation to Hemlock Pass..

Keekwulee Falls (Credit Ryan H)

Intermittent ice and snow can be found just below Hemlock Pass but it should be gone fairly soon. Arriving at Melakwa Lake early in the morning, the air was cool enough to break out the gloves as we admired the thin glaze of ice on the water from the freeze the night before – a good sign that snow conditions would be nice and consolidated on the path ahead.