Summer '22 Trip - Part 1

Dates: 7/8/22 - 7/9/22

Crew: Martin Brzozowski, John Patton

Locations: Mt. Baker Natl. Rec. Area, Baker-Snoqualmie Natl. Forest

Route Brief: https://www.mountainproject.com/route/106445849/north-ridge

Trip Video by Martin: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ejukSZ_qi8Y

Climbing Mt. Baker via North Ridge

One day in the lunchroom about 3 weeks before I was scheduled to go to California for my big summer trip of the year with Monica and Yisha, Martin asked me very earnestly if I had any interest in climbing a mountain with him. When I said sure, he continued "...in 3 weeks." Without applying any critical thinking at ALL to the question, I immediately said sure again. Martin, who wasn't actually expecting me to respond so certainly and enthusiastically, immediately got to planning. It just so happened that his planned dates for were the 4 days immediately preceding my California trip, so I was able to cancel my flight out to Cali, and fly Houston to Seattle, then Seattle to San Francisco, then take my original flight back to Houston after the Cali trip. A perfect plan!

After impulsively buying the flights, I was struck by the magnitude of what I just signed up for. I was going mountaineering. Real climbing, not just a day at the crag, or a hike, or even backpacking out in the mountains of Philmont. I had 3 weeks to prepare mentally, physically, emotionally, to learn skills, and to acquire gear. The plan was aggressive, optimistic, and assuming of a level of fitness and skill I didn't have and couldn't get in the time I had. We were going to tackle Mt. Baker in 2 days, take a pit stop in Seattle, then tackle Mt. Rainier in 2 days. That's 4 consecutive days of intense climbing on snow and ice, with many miles and about 16,000 feet of elevation gain total.

So let's talk mountains.

Mt. Baker, or Koma Kulshan, is one of Washington's massive stratovolcanoes- a 10,781' conical volcano built up by many layers (strata) of lava and volcanic debris. Think of a classic looking science fair volcano, then cover it in snow and rivers of ice. That's not an exaggeration- glaciers are literally rivers of ice that move under the force of gravity due to their own mass. And Baker is heavily glaciated, second only to Rainier in the Washington Cascades. In fact, Baker has more ice and snow than all the other Cascades volcanoes (discounting Rainier) combined. Mt. Baker ski area also holds the world record for single season snowfall with 1,140 inches- this is very much a winter wonderland, even in the height of summer. Some other accolades: Baker is the 3rd highest peak in Washington, and the 2nd most thermally active after the infamous Mt. St. Helens. Neat! The North ridge route that we were climbing involves glacier travel, ice climbing, route finding, great endurance, and ended up being 5-6000' of elevation from car to summit.

Day -1: High-Fidelity Simulation

Now let's talk training. I had 3 weeks to get it all done, and there was no hope of getting to Martin and John's level of cardio and endurance, so the best thing I could do was get a membership at the gym near my house and hit the stairmaster and leg workouts as often as possible. I started with 20-minute intervals and worked up to 2 hours on the stairmaster with boots and a 35-lb pack on. After doing this far too much trying to get my legs and mind ready, I was nursing some seriously sore hips and knees heading into the climb but at least felt confident I could hold the 1000 vertical feet/hour pace we set as a goal. I tried running, but it's too damn hot in Houston. I foolishly thought I could hold my own from a physical perspective- after all, I climb, hike, and backpack, right?

L to R: Martin in Professor mode, Me in mountain mode (it's 95 and humid!), Dixie trying to stowaway for the trip

Finally, I trained in the park with Martin where he taught me essential glacier travel skills: tying knots and a mountaineer's coil, roping up and traveling as a team, handling an ice axe and crampons, self-arresting in case of a fall and slide, walking techniques on snow and ice at different angles, and building snow anchors. To cap it all off, we roped up as a team and Martin "fell in a crevasse" by throwing the rope over a tree branch and having me "catch his fall," build an anchor, offload his weight from me to the anchor, and build a 6:1 pulley system to haul his weight over the branch and out of the crevasse. As far as training for mountain climbing in the flat, incredibly hot parks of Houston goes it was a pretty comprehensive attempt. Was it enough? Only the mountain could tell us that. As I packed my bags the night before, I was struck by an odd foreboding feeling but shook it off and promised myself I wouldn't let any anxiety get the best of me.

Day 1: Approach and Attack

Flying in to Seattle for the first time, I knew the famous volcanoes would be visible, but had no idea they would rear their heads as fearsomely as they do. I was able to see Adams, St. Helens, and finally Rainier itself came looming upwards, so close you could reach out and touch it. The plane descended past its summit until we were equal in altitude, then we plunged into the thick layer of clouds and to Seattle itself. After meeting Martin's friend and climbing partner John, we drove through some beautiful parts of town, even getting stopped at a lift bridge to let tugs and fishing ships through. Then we picked up my rental boots and Chris, the final member of our party, and sped off to the Baker-Snoqualmie National Forest.

Mt. Baker was shrouded in clouds for most of the approach drive, so I was left to stew in anticipation as we wound up the backwoods roads through lush green forests, past rich blue lakes and rushing rivers. Finally, we went to make the turn off to head to the Heliotrope Ridge trailhead and found the road washed out well below the trailhead. It was impassable to cars, and we had no choice but to park there and start on foot. This washout added some 4 miles of hiking and maybe 1500 feet of elevation gain to the hike, and on pavement nonetheless. I was too excited to begin the adventure to be too annoyed by it though! The power of the river to tear away the road like a sand castle was just an indication that we were entering real unchecked wilderness. 

The road was pleasantly cool and shaded by the greenery on all sides. As we trudged silently up the winding ribbon of asphalt, I saw moss hanging from branches in the forest and mist hanging in the air deeper in the woods where the sun couldn't penetrate to. The very picture of a PNW forest. Banana slugs oozed their way across the road as well, some speckled black and white like cows and some a bright, unnatural yellow.

Finally we reached the Heliotrope ridge trailhead, where other groups were camped on their way off the mountain. We chatted with them and found one large group had summitted on the Coleman-Deming Glacier route, which is the common way up, and one party had turned around on the North Ridge when they reached the ice. It was already approaching dinnertime as we shouldered our packs again and set off into the Mt. Baker Wilderness.

Winding our way up the trail we made stream crossing after crossing, the water rushing down from melting glaciers above. Passing small waterfalls at the beginning, they grew larger as we gained elevation until they were proper crossings. At about 5000' the first snow made its way onto the trail and we began crossing snowfields instead of streams, which I now heard flowing in hidden channels under the snowpack. It was a good opportunity to test out how my stiff mountaineering boots would feel and how to kick steps to walk securely. The trees thinned to nothing, and though the full sun was initially hot it quickly faded to a chill as a stiff breeze blew over the hillside.

The final mile of the approach trail worked its way up a ridge, with slopes of snow and scree on either side. We relentlessly gained elevation now, and John and Martin pulled ahead thanks to their fitness and experience. I trudged on and Chris stayed a little behind me. Finally, we reached a split marking a summit view to the left and the climber's route to the right. We took the brief detour to see the distant icecapped summit gleaming in the setting sun. It almost looked tiny from so far away.

Finally we reached the base of the glacier and set up camp on the last bit of rock. While we pitched Chris's 4-person pyramid tarp and battened it down to keep out the howling wind, Martin climbed a prow of snow and took some beautiful pictures of our camp with the sun going down behind it. John boiled cold stream water up for our dinners and I just took it all in. Looking back, I realized we'd punched through a sparse ocean of puffy clouds that was now being painted pink and orange. The mountaintop was bathed rosy pink with alpenglow as well. 

As the sun drifted beneath the clouds and the world became purple and deep blue, it rapidly became freezing. I bundled up in my beanie, puffy, and heavy gloves to hold out a little longer, but finally the wind convinced me to retreat to the shelter to eat and prepare my pack for summit day tomorrow. Chris made the decision that he was going to sit out the summit bid and would stay in camp the next day, and we all settled in for bed around 10pm.

Route snippets from John's GPS

We hadn't gone too far before we began to encounter crevasses- deep cracks that form when the glacier flows over a disruptive surface beneath. They can go hundreds of feet deep and can be massive caves at the top or can be invisible beneath the snow. We crossed them perpendicularly, stepping across the first dozen or so small ones before we started to see some serious splits. A few we end ran, some we were still able to step over, and finally one had a floating snow bridge that was the only way across. One at a time we stepped carefully across the bridge, crossing over a crevasse 15 feet across, dizzyingly deep, and a rich blue color inside. It was mesmerizing to look at but I couldn't pause on the bridge without tempting fate.

Finally, we reached the end of the boot pack. I asked Martin where we were supposed to go next, and he pointed straight up. The slope ahead of us was probably 45-50° continuously before it reached a resting point several hundred yards later. If that doesn't sound steep, pull out a protractor. The steepest road you've ever driven on in your life is likely 20° or less. As I stared at this, intimidated, Martin made sure to help my peace of mind by pointing out a rock outcrop that towered above the top of our steep path. "You see that rock? When the sun comes up further and hits that it's going to start melting and raining rocks on us. So we gotta hustle. Think of this as a bear crawl up the slope. Punch your hands in and then move your feet up, and repeat. Keep pace." Then he started up without wasting more time. Kicking my feet hard into the deep foot buckets that Martin was excavating from the slope, I punched my axe in with my left hand, holding it near the head, and then punched my right fist straight through the crusty snow. My feet following suit, and we were off. It felt like an eternity but was probably half an hour or so. Still, I was quite exhausted and a little spooked by the time we crested the slope. It had been far too steep and frozen for a self-arrest to work. That means had any of us fallen we probably would have pulled the other two down with us for a nasty tumble.

With the sun now shining strongly on us, things got hot quickly. I stripped off my beanie, hardshell, and heavy gloves and lathered my face with sunscreen. Behind us, puffy clouds fell in over the distant mountains, but didn't seem to be an imminent threat. The views were incredible, but we couldn't rest for long.  We continued up a series of traverses and steep slopes, and I did my best to keep up. The serac wall (an overhanging ice cliff) that forms the technical crux of the route came into sight high above us.

Finally one last steep snow slope separated us from the base of the ice wall. Following carefully in Martin's footsteps, I started up and saw he had stepped over a small-ish crevasse, maybe 2 feet across. I took a long step and planted my boot exactly in his footprint on the other side. Before I knew what was happening, the edge of the crevasse fell in and my right leg went with it, nearly to the waist. Terrified, I plunged my ice axe into the slope and lurched forward to throw my upper body on the uphill side of the crevasse. Quickly I pulled myself out before I could think about it, but that shook me up more than I liked. 

We reached the base of the ice, where the snow was too steep to even comfortably stand. As Martin rigged himself out to lead the ice portion, I dug a hole in the slope to sit in and try and breathe. The wind quickly set a deep chill on me, and I bundled into my puffy as John belayed Martin out. I also realized at this point that I was out of food and water. Not great! We had a miscommunication while packing and I ended up bringing about half the food that Martin did. This wasn't a problem yet, but would be as I burned through calories at an expedited pace.

The ice is different every year and we weren't sure where the best spot to attack would be. With overhanging walls looming above and left of us, that was out of the question. Martin headed into a wide crack in the cliff, hoping for good features to climb. For 20 minutes or so he looked for strong water ice to place a screw in as protection, but he called back that everything was rotten. He then had to downclimb out of the crack and traverse further right to the lowest portion of the ice wall looking for a chink in the armor. He went off over the brow of rock and ice and shortly after, John followed him up, leaving me waiting alone on the wall. It was a strange feeling, dug into my little cave, sitting in the shade of a massive ice wall, looking down thousands of feet of steep mountain as John disappeared around the corner. It was isolation at the highest scale, utterly intimidating and utterly calming.

Then I was up. I'd tried ice climbing in Michigan when I was in the climbing club but had never done anything like this. Where John and Martin had two ice tools (curved shaft for grip and heads angled to attack vertical ice), I had one tool and one straight-shafted axe. I started traversing, carefully placing my crampon points on the rocks peeking through the ice and digging into the snow. I removed the ice screws as I went, placing them on my harness. When I reached the truly vertical wall of ice, I swung hard and my axes bit into the ice. I kicked my left foot hard into the wall to get purchase with the front points of my crampons. So far so good! 

I swung my right foot into the wall, and the crampon fell apart, fell off my foot, slid down the mountain, and fell promptly into a crevasse. Not so good! (I believe ice had built up in the adjustment lever and pushed apart the attachment between the toe and heel parts of the crampon, and then my kick was all it needed to perform rapid unscheduled disassembly.) I decided now would be a good time to start worrying. Gripping wildly to my axes I shouted over the ridge to John, out of sight, that my crampon was gone. The wind was howling so hard I couldn't hear if he responded, but the rope seemed to tighten. Regardless, I was being belayed from above so a fall would just leave me dangling from the taut rope (assuming John was well anchored) and I had nowhere to go but up. Climbing vertical ice normally relies on all 4 points of contact; you move your axes up, then your feet, stand on them, and repeat. With one foot now and one truly trustworthy hand, I had to put in every ounce of strength to get over the 20 foot hump in front of me. As I did a pullup over the edge, I was massively relieved to see John sitting there belaying me up. The 15 minutes I spent in my pseudo-isolation on the mountain was all I wanted for the day.

John traded me a good tool for my ice axe and we continued to pitch our way upwards. There were 3 total pitches (ropelengths) that Martin protected, so something like 300 feet before the ice got low enough angled that we could safely (carefully) resume the roped team travel. These pitches with one foot unable to get purchase on the ice were an eternity to me, and definitely burned a lot more energy than I could afford to burn. Finally, we saw the summit ridge and gaining it, saw the true summit within our reach, brimming with climbers who had come up the Coleman-Deming and Easton Glacier routes on the other side. We slogged up to the summit, wind and clouds now pushing in on us hard from all sides.

The final steps to the summit- note the bare boot on my right foot. Crampon lost to the mountain for eternity.

We tagged the summit long enough for a single selfie, and then hustled our way off to try and find the route down before the clouds completely engulfed us. After the ordeal on the way up and the stress of losing the crampon while alone, I barely had time to register the summit. Besides, it wasn't over until we were all the way back to the car. We hadn't made it far off the summit before a cloud hit us at full force, and we entered a state of whiteout.

The whiteout was so engulfing that at times, I couldn't see John or Martin on the other ends of the rope coming off of my waist. I followed the tugging rope in front, carefully placing each step (especially with my booted right foot). John had the route downloaded on GPS and we had to double back a few times to make sure we didn't stray off route. We could barely even see the bootpack of the much more traveled routes as we followed our way down to the saddle between the Coleman and Deming glaciers. Once, I nearly walked right into John standing still and staring at a huge dropoff that wasn't visible from even 10 feet behind where he stood.

As we continued through seemingly endless snowfields and around ridge after ridge, I noticed myself getting more exhausted. Everything was starting to pile up on me- the 3 hours of sleep, the lack of food and water, the extreme exertion and stress since the ice climb, the stiff rental boots on my feet noticeably unpleasant now, and my left ankle starting to seize in pain. The compensation it had to do for my crampon-less right foot took a huge toll on my left achilles tendon. When we stopped for a breather now I found myself flopping down in the snow, not caring if my pants were soaking through or my butt was cold. Then I was laying down, dizzy and not sure how much longer I could keep it up.

The sun on this side of the mountain had turned the snow to utter slush, a stark departure from the icy hardpack we climbed all morning. As I plunge-stepped my way down, I often post-holed in up to mid-thigh and it took a huge effort to pull out my leg and repeat the hard plunge and stay upright. After hours of this grueling process, we finally saw Heliotrope ridge come into view again. Camp. As we stumbled up, Chris emerged from the tent with food and water that he was willing to spare, and I ate like my life depended on it. Strength came back quickly, and I knew I could make it off the mountain now. We packed up camp and got right to backtracking the approach from yesterday; light would be fading soon. Ironically, two ski mountaineers who were on the slopes way below us during our climb were camped next to us and came out to tell how they heard my yell and saw my crampon tumble down the mountain. They were glad we made it over and back down alright.

After an uneventful but painful hike back to the trailhead, we regrouped one last time and went about the even more painful walk down the miles of road to the car. Stepping downhill on pavement with 35-40 pounds on my back after spending all day kicking my feet into ice was even worse than I expected, but Martin and I rolled downhill rapidly with the promise of true rest at the end. We reached the car at about 8pm, 16 hours after we had started our day. I was still hurting for food and water, my feet felt badly blistered, my left achilles was screaming now with each step, and I realized I had never reapplied sunscreen once things got serious on the mountain. My face was burned. Badly. But we were back at the car, and we were all okay. 

Piling back in the car, we decided we needed food most urgently. Baker is in the middle of nowhere, so after driving our way back down the forest road we really only had a few options the entire way back to Seattle that would be open still. We stopped at the first one, an old-timey saloon-feeling bar and grill. As we stumbled in, everyone's legs really stiff now after the chance to sit in the car, we fell into a booth only for the greatest tragedy of all to occur: the waitress said the kitchen had just closed! We stumped back out to the car, defeated, and as we were about to drive away she hurried out to rap on our car window. We were confused, but she had watched us walk out and we walked so unsteadily she thought we were completely drunk! She was adamant she couldn't let us drunk drive away, and wouldn't believe we had just climbed a stratovolcano instead of gotten hammered in the bar. Finally after arguing for a while, she insisted on at least giving us chips, salsa, and water to "sober us up" for our drive. I appreciated that, at least. It was the only food we got for the night, and we beelined it back to John's apartment to collapse and get ready for a turnaround to Mt. Rainier. One adventure down, and only a little (lot) worse for the wear to show for it! My ankle and blisters were posing a serious problem for the next 2 weeks of climbing and hiking I had planned, but one day at a time for now.

In all seriousness, I owe John and Martin a lot for trusting me to be a part of their team, helping me through the learning pains of my first mountain, and for showing me how inspiring and serious mountaineering is. I learned a lot, made mistakes that I learned from, and was proud of the mental and physical resilience I found in myself to make it in the face of all the unknowns and challenges of the day.

Also, check out this cool video Martin made!