Mt Baker Easton Glacier

Spring season is off to a good start.  Mount Baker is a climb that has eluded us twice now - the first time, more than 4 years ago now, we didn't do enough research on road conditions before heading out and effectively ended any chance of a summit before we put on our (very heavy telemark) boots. The second time, the year after, we got much higher before a specific lack of pointy equipment and general lack of HTFU ended the attempt.



So we put it on the backburner.  It's been a few years of getting smarter and faster, and this weekend the conditions looked right, so we just packed up and went.  It's amazing what those years of experience can do - we just cruised right up the mountain, summitted, had an excellent ski down, and went home.  It was delightful.  No discomfort*, no fatigue, no one used the word "epic".














Some beta:

We went up the Easton Glacier route.  At this point in the season the road was melted out up to the "no wheels past this point" sign, which is about 3.5km from the campground.  We skinned up the road and a few extra km towards the base of the Easton glacier, and pitched a tent before it got steep.

We didn't bother getting up too early, since we wanted to ski down on soft snow.  The route up the Easton glacier is well used by snowmobiles, and this weekend was no exception.  Aside from the mosquito-like sense of harassment, this does make for fast travel - we did not ever feel the need to rope up, what with any possible crevasses being thoroughly tested by these winter skidoos.  The last pitch adjacent to the Roman wall is pretty steep, and we ended up bootpacking to the summit - there is a looming crevasse below this, so an earlier arrival and frozen conditions might have required some more caution or protection.  In our case, we had perfect conditions for the climb.  The ski down was firm but nice at the top, amazing in the middle, and mushy/refrozen snowmobile gnar at the bottom, depending on where the shadows were.

Once back in the forest, the ski out proved to be the hardest part of the day.  It seems grooming season is over, so the snowmobile tracks were wall-to-wall, and a spectacular demonstration of how bad these pump tracks can get.  The road is also a little too shallow to glide down, so in addition to the quad workout you get a lot of poling practice.

Overall an excellent day and a recommended route (snowmobiles not required).

*sunburned nose excluded