Mt Baker Solo

Mt Baker (10,781ft)

Skis on the summit

April 24, 2018

Eric Gilbertson

I left Seattle Monday evening after work and drove a few hours up to the south side of Mt Baker. I turned up Baker Lake Road, then on FR 12, then up FR 13. I had tried earlier in the day many times to call the forest service office in Sedro Wooly to ask how far the road was open, but couldn’t get an answer.

I discovered that the snowline is currently at the 2,400ft switchback on FR 13, about 4 or 5 miles from the summer trailhead. I reached this point just before sunset, as the final snowmobiler was loading up his sled in his truck. I pulled off to park in the mud, and realized my headlights had stopped working. This wasn’t an immediate problem, but meant I would need to get back to the car early enough the next day to make it back to Seattle before dark.

A view of Mt Shuksan on the way up

I had planned on just sleeping in the car and doing a really big summit day, but with this new constraint, I decided to make as much progress as possible that night. I quickly packed up and headed out in the dark. I carried my skis for about 5 minutes before I could start skinning up the snow. After about 1.5 hours of skinning I reached the summer trailhead.

The thought crossed my mind to just continue through the night to guarantee that I got back to the car early in the day. But this was a bad idea for several reasons. It would certainly mess up my sleep schedule. But also, I wouldn’t be able to see any crevasses higher up on the mountain in the dark. My route up the Squak Glacier is very safe, but there are some big crevasses to avoid. They are very obvious and avoidable in the daylight, but less so at night.

I came to the compromise of planning to get to the edge of the glacier at sunrise. So I set out my bivy sack and crawled into my sleeping bag at 10:30pm for a few hours of sleep. By 2am I was awake and moving by 2:30am. I followed a GPS track that Greg Slayden had made back on our attempt in 2016, and that worked really well. I was also following some snowmobile tracks up through the woods.

A small crack on the way up

Before long I left the trees, and the snow was hard and icy. On one slope it was too steep for my skis, so I skied back down and put on crampons to climb up. I scrambled up and over Crag View, then put the skis back on and skinned up the Squak Glacier. I followed some old ski tracks, then a set of snowmobile tracks to about 8,000ft. The tracks ended, and I then continued following the GPS track that I knew was a safe route.

I eventually reached the crater rim beneath the Roman Wall. I’ve heard the Roman Wall is often icy, and I hit an icy patch of snow so switched over to crampons. I carried my skis up just in case, and the snow softened and seemed like it would be great for skiing.

Eventually I reached the false summit and put my skis back on, then skinned over to the true summit by 9:15am. I earned an official S.O.S. ascent (skis on summit). It was very windy and cold, but the views were great into the Picket Range and the surrounding cascades. I saw one other set of ski tracks, that I later learned were from two people that skied up from Heliotrope Ridge on Sunday.

The summit on the left

I soon skied back down, and took the skins off at the top of the Roman Wall. For some reason the glue stuck to the bottom of the skins and I couldn’t glide at all. I spent about 30 minutes trying to rub and scrape it off, and eventually got enough off to ski down. The Roman Wall was fun packed powder, like a groomed ski run. In fact, the skiing was great for the first 6,000ft. I followed my tracks down, and skirted around Crag View. Once I reached the trees the snow softened and was a bit harder to turn in.

By 11:30am I was back at my bivy site, so I packed up, put the skins back on, and skinned back to the car at 12:45pm. I didn’t see another person the whole day, despite it being perfect weather. I made it back to Seattle well before sunset and got the headlights fixed that afternoon.

© 2018, egilbert@alum.mit.edu. All rights reserved.