WA Vacation

We woke up to a clear blue sky. Jen and Jeff were to do a harder route but we detered by the bad conditions, and decided to play with the rest of us :) We headed up to the ridge just above our camp, and was rewarded by the marvelous views of the mountains surrounded us, and of course, our objective of the day, the summit Mt Baker. As the morning went by, it was getting hotter and the postholing was getting worst. After a long tedious traverse basking under the sun, we arrived at the saddle below the summit cone, few of us decided to turn back. Rob, Jen, Jeff, Lei and I decided to go on. Kim graciously gave me her extra water which was a great help.

After a quick break, we headed up the last big snow cone before the summit. I fell behind Rob, Jen and Jeff when I stopped to deal with my glacier glasses. The sun was behind us at this point, and the rays sneaked in through the tiny gap between my right temple and the glasses, I was began to see spots. Fearing that I may develop snow blindness if I didn't take care of it, I stopped to double up my glasses with my goggle to ensure a better protection. It sure felt much better after the adjustment, I could open my eyes again. By now, I had fell far behind the faster trio. They were doing all the hard work of kicking steps up the snowfield.

Climbing up a steep snowfield with your crampons balling-up every step you took was very unnerving, ehhh... coming down would be even worst :(

Step by step, I slowly made my way up the steepest section just below the summit crater. If the skiers didn't tell me the summit was another 20' climb away, I would have thought the snowed-in flat crater was the summit. As I was stumbling around looking for a 20' bump to climb, I saw the trio walking toward a tiny snow cone. As it turned out, when they reached the crater, it was clouded-in, they couldn't see anything taller and thought they're on the summit, only as the cloud cleared, then they saw the summit cone. Pretty funny. I can imagine the "D'oh!" moment.

Anyway, so all four of us made it to the summit together, and Lei arrived shortly after! The climb back to the camp was a morale bashing, spirit crushing experience. We're clouded in as soon as we climbed below the saddle, with almost whiteout conditions and freaking postholing on every step we took, we slogged and cursed our way back to the camp around 8 PM. Thanks to Kim, who had been busy melting snow for us, we had plenty of water to rehydrate.

We hiked out the next morning under lightly drizzling sky. Glissaded wherever we could, made the descend faster and wicked fun! On a slope we saw remnant of a fresh avalanche, Jen thought it was trigger by skiers. It was a weird looking sight, like a big snow balls field, it made for a bumpy glissading ride.

We got out, drove back to Bellingham, had lunch and drove back to SeaTac area. The weather forcast for the next few days didn't look good. On top of that, the access road to our plan B and C were still snowed-in, which made a longer approach. We stayed at SeaTac area for two extra nights, hung out with Doug and done some bar-hopping. Most folks made arrangement to fly home the next day, Kim and I decided to visit Olympic National Park, the hot springs were calling!