Mt Baker, Easton Glacier, June 14-15 2008
The trip started on Saturday, plodding up from Schreiber’s Meadow to a campsite on the Easton Glacier. All 20 or so of us straggled in, started digging, and we soon had our multicolored tent village. The sun was warm, the wind was light, and the mood was relaxed as we lazily set up tents, ate freeze dried dinners, and lounged around the rocks. We tried to sleep under the still hot afternoon sun to prepare for getting up at midnight the “next day”.
The first hours of the ascent were like nothing else. The glow of headlamps strung out along the route, neighboring peaks floating above pink clouds at dawn, seeing the moon set and sun rise. Though I was literally tied to four other people, my task as second on the rope was simple and constrained: keep walking, don’t fall, watch the rope in front of me. In the darkness and silence, separated by 10 meters or so of rope from anyone else, I knew nothing of their private struggles with cold, nausea, dying batteries, uncertainty, impatience, and they knew nothing of mine. I didn’t know if anyone else saw the same thin clouds drifting in front of the red setting moon, or the same drape of icicles off the edge of a crevasse.
Summit View
The climb was uneventful (which was a good thing – nobody wants an event). We reached the summit 5 or 6 hours after we started, spent some time taking pictures, and descended to camp before noon. All that was left was a mildly unpleasant walk through soupy slush and on melting gravel roads and we were in the car heading back to sea level and back to the city. We had glimpses of the mountain all the way home, but we were already in a different world of traffic, laundry, work, and hot showers.
(more of my pictures, other pictures from Kristin, John, Daniel, Cara, and Ben)