Birthday Ice Climb

July 24, 1999

I climbed Mt. Baker to celebrate my 30th birthday. Mt. Baker isn’t just any mountain though. It’s the third highest peak in Washington. This winter it broke the world record for snowfall in one season. I’ve climbed mountains before but never anything like this, requiring full climbing gear and lots of preparation. Just the 7100-foot elevation gain alone is enough to be daunting (in comparison, the Grand Canyon is 4500 feet high), but then you have to deal with snow camping, adverse weather, and watch out for crevasses. Was I crazy to try? Yep.

We set out Friday morning for our two-day adventure after a Herculean effort Thursday night to get all our stuff together. Ryan Powell was the trip leader (he’s done ice climbing several times before and is addicted to it!). Generally, climbing with at least three people is recommended, and another person was going to come but cancelled out on us, so it was just the two of us. Ryan did a great job of leading for the trip, helping me rent, buy, and borrow the appropriate gear Thursday night. We headed up to Bellingham on Friday morning, registered at the ranger station, and finally got to the 3600’ trailhead to start hiking at about 2 PM. Our packs were about 45 pounds each – not very light! I had doubted that we needed all that equipment, but sure enough we pretty much used everything we brought and actually could have brought more.

We hiked along in beautiful alpine country for a couple of miles before we got to the non-stop snow country. We came to our first views of Coleman Glacier. Pictures are nice to see, but there’s nothing like being there and seeing God’s creations in person. Imagine a huge ice formation constantly marching downward and crushing everything below it at a whopping speed of a couple of feet per year, complete with strange contortions, forbidden chasms, and the famous blue ice. Under special conditions of sitting for many centuries, glacier ice actually turns a beautiful blue color. A beautiful sight, made complete with the summit of Mt. Baker looming behind it. Ryan encouraged me to get a picture of Mt. Baker now, since he’d never seen it so clear. Several people were camping at the “toe of the glacier.”

We hiked up, up, and up in the snow to the first good base campsite. We rested there for a little while before deciding to go on up further to make our hike easier on the second day. We got out our ice axes for the next section, a very steep mountain that you must climb at an angle to succeed. The use of the ice axe came very naturally. Just sink the end into the ice to hold you in place as you make the next step. At last we came to the big snow plateau where we would camp. We found our spot on the far side and looking down on this field, nestled at the base of a ridge, where a small flat area had been dug out of the snow. As we set up camp I joked with Ryan that I had always pictured base camp as a place with hotels and full amenities, not a snow dugout! We found some snow, which we heated up for drinking water, then started boiling some other water for exquisite ramen cuisine.

We hurried over to the nearby ridge to watch the sunset. We got to a good viewpoint just in time to see a spectacular show. The setting sun shared its orange and purple colors with clouds lying below us in the distance. From here as well, we could see the San Juan Islands, the Olympic Mountains, and vast chains of mountains right around us. I took enough pictures to make an almost-complete panorama. I was especially fascinated by the ripples of crevasses I could see in the glacier below, enhanced by the fading light. We ran back to camp to check on our dinner before returning again to the ridge to enjoy the end of the light show.

One other unique experience was hearing the incredible and terrible sound of avalanche in the mountain in the distance above us. We were well out of danger but could imagine the sinking feeling one gets when hearing that sound above them. We watched as large chunks of ice fell off of a formation to expose the same beautiful blue glacier ice underneath it.

We then had dinner (ramen never tasted so good) and went to bed. We were supposed to go to bed early (and were tired enough to) so we could wake up early, but had gotten a late start and still had to finish tying ropes for the climb. We decided to “sleep in” until 4 AM since we had hiked well beyond the first base campsite. I didn’t sleep too well -- I rarely do sleep well in the outdoors, but was sleeping on top of ice and my sleeping pad had a leak in it. Although I was very tired I was glad when it was time to get up. In constrast with Friday, it was to be a foggy, misty, and later, rainy day. With all the preparing (making the harnesses, getting tied up to the rope, putting crampons on our shoes) we didn’t head out until about 5:30 AM. We set out to summit Mt. Baker, with Ryan in the lead and me behind. We were both tied to the rope with 80 feet between us. It was just like being led on a leash! I learned a powerful object lesson in the process. When you get to flat sections one would naturally want to speed up, but you need to keep at the same rate as the person still climbing a hill behind you. You can only lead as fast as others will follow.

We went up, up, and up in the early hazy hours, too far apart to talk much. Climbing can be a pretty lonely sport. We battled being hot and cold all day long, sweating like crazy from all the work but then cooling off too much when taking layers off or when resting. We passed several crevasses on the way, taking moments to peer deep down into some narrow, seemingly bottomless crevasses. The hidden enemy: if you don’t watch for and avoid them you can fall to your death. The eerie environment of possible death made this seem like some movie or something. However, with our equipment we had a method to rescue ourselves if we fall in. If one falls in, the other(s) dig into the ice with their ice axes and the other person is left dangling from the rope. With special small ropes called prussics, one can actually ascend the rope slowly but surely and get out of the crevasse. Sounds like repentance!

We finally got to the last ridge where we rested for a bit before continuing. Ryan really felt the effects of altitude so we slowed way down and took more rest breaks. I was amazed how quickly I could start dreaming as we rested. At last we came to the final challenge: the Roman Wall. The Roman Wall isn’t steeper than any other steep section but it goes on and on and on forever. Even in the low-visibility weather I could see a sheer dropoff from over to our left. I was starting to wonder if we would ever get to the top, but at last we did at around 11:30 AM. I was disappointed that we didn’t have good enough weather to see very far at all, but you always take your chances with the weather. You sure can get exposed to the sun even in hazy weather though. Even with this weather I still ended up with a major sunburn on my face (especially my nose).

We headed back down at a rapid rate through increasingly miserable weather. The mist and rain made it very difficult for me to see with my glasses on, so I constantly alternated between two different kinds of blindness: one with glasses and one without. (I've got to get new contacts!) We had a certain run step, and even took off our crampons to go faster. But it was crazy going, running though all that deep snow (after all this is the world record snowfall), and I sunk in so deep that I actually got my boots stuck in the snow a couple of times and we had to stop for me to dig myself out. It was like skiing without skis! I remembered why I love summer sports more than winter sports! We were still tied to each other with the rope, and had to be careful to keep going at a fast enough rate for each other.

Things got easier after we got below the Roman Wall. We glissaded (sat down and slid) in a couple of places, fun and interesting to do. (When you’re tied to someone else sliding you had better start sliding before the rope runs out!) We hurried on down to our base camp, just getting a bit lost once towards the bottom. Was our camp ever a sight for weary eyes! I was wet, cold, and out of dry clothes. We hurriedly repacked, reloaded ourselves with heavy packs, and started on down. We came to the steep slope from last night and tried to make our way down it, but it was so steep that I soon tripped and fell quite a ways. Ryan had told me what to do: dig in with my ice axe. But with my heavy pack, I kept falling and falling down the steep slope. It was pretty scary, especially since we couldn’t see very far below us and just knew that there were some crevasses below that I could fall into – and we weren’t roped to each other anymore! I finally got the ice axe dug in enough to stop me. What a relief! It was very steep terrain here as we terraced further over to where we thought we were safe from crevasses. Then we slid the rest of the way down the slope to the first base camp. After all that sliding I was amazed by the huge size of that slope! We made our way over to another huge ice field and quickly made our way down it by sliding all the way to the bottom of the ice field where it meets the trail for the last couple of miles back to the car. It was a lot of fun sliding along although I was a bit worried about the creeks running just below the ice we were sliding down.

We hiked the rest of the way out, and although the trail again seemed like it would go on forever, at long last we reached the car at about 5:40 PM. So I had spent one wonderful day and one very rough day climbing the world record-breaking snow mountain for my 30th birthday! I had hoped to have some time at the top to ponder how my life is going and make some goals for the next 10 or 30 years, but the weather forced my hand and that had to wait. It was just like my life though: some wonderful experiences, some very difficult experiences, but all worth it.