Background
Sometimes you just have to ‘go have a look’. I can’t claim to have coined that term, Vivian Bruchez’s voice rings through my head when I say that. I don’t have the French accent to pull it off, but it’s true. Often times I sit at home, refreshing telemetry data and weather models nitpicking this or that. ‘We’ (the collective we) have more information at our fingertips than ever before to analyze conditions, but sometimes you just don’t know until you go.
Earlier in the week, Nick and I had been psyched for a multi-day high pressure window that appeared to be setting up for the weekend. We tossed around ideas, got psyched, and then began to waffle. Classic. It’s gonna be really warm. . . there’s gonna be so many people on Shuksan. . . on and on. We ultimately bailed on our ambitious plans for Saturday, due to a number of factors but the main one being things just weren’t quite feeling right.
We still wanted to get out on Sunday, even if it was just a walk for a walk’s sake. Haigh was psyched too, a crew was assembled. To combat the warmth, we had to get up high, really high. The northside of Baker is pretty ideal for this kind of set up: mellow approach, lots of options, and this year less people due to the road washout. Back in the early winter I purchased an e-bike, mostly out of desperation and fear that roads would be inaccessible come springtime. Up until this point I hadn’t really used it much at all, aside from riding to friends’ houses and back.
I proposed we head up the north ridge (the ‘sneak variation’ for skiers who aren’t big boy climbers), peek at the snow conditions on the steeper panel of snow at the base around 8000′, and ‘window shop’ from there. If things didn’t make sense for going up the north ridge, we could pivot back to walking up the C-D; if things were good on the north ridge, we could ramp up or down as we saw fit. We were all psyched.
Trip Report
Nick and I loaded the e-bikes up at my house around 4A and headed north towards Haigh. We reached the MP3.5 washout by 630A and began to get ready. By 7A we were heading up the road, with Haigh in tow (he doesn’t have an e-bike). We pretty quickly found that our e-bikes are not great for towing, at least on Glacier Creek Road. It’s pretty darn steep and I managed to overheat my rear hub motor. Porter’s e-bike that Nick borrowed is much better (it’s a BAFANG mid-drive) and managed to tow Haigh more successfully.
Regardless, e-bikes worked great and we were up the road and skinning towards the Heliotrope trailhead within an hour or so. We entered the forest with just enough snow to wonder: should we try Grouse Creek? With enough patchy snow, we opted to not test our luck and just continued along the well trodden snowy trail towards the Hogsback.
When we were transitioning from our shoes to boots, Nick turned to me with a look of despair.
Uh oh… – Nick
What is it? Is your water bladder leaking? – Sam
No, worse… – Nick
What’s worse than your bladder leaking?? – Sam
I forgot my food. – Nick.
Hilariously appropriate for the day. Nick never forgets his old, ragged orange stuff sack full of food. Never. But today, he got my spare slice of pizza, stale Safeway oatmeal raisin cookies (which he complained about) and some gummy snacks from Haigh.
We were hitting our time targets as we ascended up the Hogsback and began to traverse towards the north ridge. Unfortunately we were still encountering a nasty solar crust up to 7,000′. Dang, this is pretty high. We were glad we had punted on our Shuksan plans. As we began to enter the critical elevation band of 7,000′-8,000′, though, things started to change in a hurry. The solar crust began to turn to a wind crust, which began to fade as we neared the base of the north ridge. My overstoke began to overdrive. Guys, this snow is f*ing amazing. The brain started to imagine what the day might bring.
Looking around, coverage on the upper mountain looked quite good. The upper-roll of the Coleman Glacier Headwall (CGHW) didn’t have the typical texture I’ve seen it have, glossy from afar with indication of rime. Instead, it looked slightly rippled, lightly touched by the wind. Maybe it’s April ‘glue’ pow?!
We dug a pit at the base of the north ridge to check out the layers and if a slab was sitting atop a harsh crust. We found a rightside up surface snowpack sitting atop 1F rounds. We performed a compression test and got progressive fracture from the shoulder. It started to feel pretty game-on. We kicked ourselves, a bit, that we had left our ascent plates at home as we began up the large snow slope. Oh well.
Bergschrunds were pretty hollow this day, and we opted to rope up to cross the lower schrund on the north ridge. I had punched through it with my pole while booting, which was enough to spook a bit. Aside from that, booting was slow and we mosied our way up the ridge. Once at the ‘sneak’ to climber’s right of the ridge proper, we got our tools out and prepared for some front pointing. We’d entertained the idea of skiing the ridge, but today wasn’t the day. Sadly, the sneak was blue-ice, rime chickenheads that were quite easy to just low-dagger up but wouldn’t make for a pleasant ski descent. Hopefully that changes with some gluey spring storms!
We topped out the ridge and mosied over to the summit. It was so pleasant out, little wind and although forecast to be quite warm it didn’t feel it. We were the only ones on the summit, hung out for a bit and nibbled, pondering what was in store for us. We discussed.
I always love throwing a Park Headwall descent into a north ridge day, it feels so proper. But we all agreed that dropping the Park didn’t make a ton of sense today. It was 3P or so, the climb back up the Cockscomb was probably pretty cooked, and we could just invest that time into checking out the CGHW instead. I was psyched to check out the CGHW, as were Nick and Haigh. We talked about the appropriate conditions for skiing it, aligning on what ‘good’ surface snow meant. It can be hard for different skiers to have the same interpretation of what appropriate surface conditions are for big lines; I’m trying to get better at talking all these things through before getting to the big, intimidating roll-over and having adrenaline take over.
We mosied over the Grant Plateau, transitioned, and prepared to drop off the end of the Earth. We were finding soft, gluey pow on the roll-over, a first for me entering this line. Usually it’s just all rime shit snow. Hmmm…this is pretty good so far.
Nearing the roll, we talked about strategy. I had a 40m line, we’d make an anchor for someone to belay a skier on belay to check out the roll. I’ve entered the roll before not on belay, only to bail…it wasn’t super fun. Having the rope in tow felt more dialed this time.
I was scheduled to be fish bait today, so Nick made an ice axe anchor, and cast me off on the rod. I pushed out, finding soft snow. Where’s the rime? I poked around extensively, trying to make sure if I greenlit the entrance for the guys that everyone would be on board. I made a few turns on belay: glue. Soft, gluey snow with some hints of the bottom but not slabby, not too sluffy, and very confidence inspiring. I think this a go, guys, I radioed back.
Off the rope, I made my way down, finding it getting better as I distanced myself from the convex roll. I found a decent spot to wait, then radioed up to Nick and Haigh. Nick went next, stoked. I could see the giddy look even from a hundred yards away. When he reached me, we fist bumped and radioed up to Haigh. Haigh started down, with Nick leapfrogging down past me to open the next pitch.
It was honestly pretty ideal conditions for the CGHW and I’m stoked we went and had a look. It wasn’t the focal point of our plans coming in, but hey…when you go window shopping sometimes you find a good deal.
The rest of the day went smoothly, skiing some corn-adjacent mank at times back to the shoes and then having a victory e-bike descent down the road back to the car. As we looked back up at the mountain from the washout, Vivian’s voice rang through my head. Let’s go have a look…