[Just_Some_Hiker]

The weather looked so-so for the Baker area this weekend, so christensent and I decided to roll the dice and see if we could bag Baker's summit. Not having a snowmobile, we had to make the 7-mile trek to the trailhead on foot. I'm not usually bothered by long approaches, but it wasn't long into the skin that I started to get some really nasty hotspots. This usually isn't a problem, but I can only guess that my feet didn't like all the low-angle skinning. My spirits were a little dampened, but I gritted my teeth and continued on. After several hours or painful skinning, we made it to the trailhead. Already there was an NWAC guy on a snowmobile who had been doing some in-field observations. He gave us a positive update on avy and route conditions which perked me up a bit. We took the winter route from there, which essentially follows the stream gully all the way up to above treeline. The route went, but definitely could have used a little more snow -- especially for the ski down. We made a semi-high camp on a ridge a little above treeline, around 5,000 ft. The next morning we started up again just before sunrise. It was a little cloudy but we were cautiously optimistic that things would clear up, or at least not get any worse. As we came into view of the upper mountain, we saw that it was almost completely socked in. Visibility was good at least until Colfax, so we decided to, at the very least, make it that far. As we pushed on, more clouds began to roll in and visibility began to diminish. When we were just a little bit shy of Colfax, it began to snow. I decided we should bail immediately. Skiing conditions were surprisingly good, so we had a pretty solid ski back to camp. After packing up our gear, we skied back down to the stream gully and followed it to the trailhead. From there we had a mostly fast downhill ski back to the sno-park. There were a couple short flat/uphill sections, but it wasn't too bad. On one of the uphill sections a nice guy on a snowmobile offered a rope-tow, but I thanked him and declined. This was my first ski on Baker, and conditions were relatively good for a volcano in winter. It was a little bit of a sufferfest, but I was satisfied with making it as far as we did.

[christensent]

Some more pictures. First try at some night shots with my new camera.

[Distel32]

[Nancyann]

Nice photos! My brother and I hiked up to the Heliotrope Ridge climber's camp on June 29 last summer and ran into several groups of ecstatic skiers returning from the summit.

image

Everyone had a big smile on their face and said the skiing was great!

[Just_Some_Hiker]

[PaleoCook]

Awesome. Really makes me want to pick up skiing next season. That probably would have been torturous with only snowshoes and boots. Thanks for sharing .