Mt Baker - A Snowshoe Sufferfest Story

TLDR: I invited myself up Mt Baker with my friend Blake, and his friend Anthony showed us the way. It was long, it was hard, and snowshoes are not as fun as skis. What an incredible day finally standing atop Mt Baker!

Written December 2024

After the disappointment of getting injured training for Mt Baker Ultra, the race getting canceled, and being out $800, I had a surprisingly good time at Backyard Ultra instead.

I still wanted to go up Mt Baker, so I started making plans with some other friends, Jeff and Nic. They wanted to do it in two days, and weather was looking good on the weekend... of Jas and my 6 months-of-dating celebration. I was pretty torn, but Jas said she was fine if we celebrated the day after.

But, when my friend Blake mentioned that he was going up Mt Baker in a single day with his friend Anthony, whom I knew through Strava. They were going the day prior to Jas and my 6 months, so I shamelessly invited myself along. Anthony was cool with it, so we readied ourselves to head out!

It was a symbiotic agreement with Blake: I supplied him with a helmet, harness, crampons, and rescue gear, while Blake drove us down to Bellingham to Anthony and his wife's house.

Preparation

We met just outside of Bellingham at Anthony and Liz' house. I was really stoked by their home-gym and climbing wall / gear room. #Goals!

Anthony's coworkers from fire academy Ryan and Tim were joining as well.

We practiced the rope rescue systems for traveling on the glacier on their driveway. I would be on a rope team with Blake, while Anthony would lead the rope team with Ryan and Tim.

After everything was packed, we took a short nap until midnight, and set off for Baker's Easton glacier trailhead.

The Climb

Just before 2 am, we departed from the trailhead up the snowy forest service road. After crossing a bridge, we slowly picked our way through the dark with headlamps illuminating the way before us. Soon, we were walking on the toe of the glacier, with rushing streams of water run-off echoing around the moraine. As we emerged into the wide-open terrain, we got our first glimpse of the summit. We'd be looking at that view for a loooong time.

The sky was perfectly clear as we climbed higher and higher, eventually spotting the first signs of dawn on the horizon. As the sun climbed higher, we put on sunscreen and covered our eyes and bare skin to avoid snow-blindness and sun-burns.

On either side of us, we spotted overnight summit teams getting ready to push on to the summit. As we continued, I realized that we were following about a 10-foot wide mega-highway of footprints up the glacier.

I was expecting to leap heroically across gaping crevasses, but instead found myself trudging up a rather tame snowfield.

Baker was a lot easier than I anticipated in terms of technicality. While we didn't cross a single crevasse on our route, we stayed roped together in case we encountered a hidden hole. Stepping onwards up the snow, the sun lit up the landscape.

Just before the sun hit us - hues of blue

After a while, we found ourselves at the "sulphur pit," or the gaping crater of the volcano. Here, breathing in the smell of rotten eggs, we prepared for the final climb up the Roman Headwall to the summit plateau. We unroped from one another, not wanting to clothes-line other parties if we fell, or get caught up by another falling team and all tumble into a crevasse below. The final climb was gruelling in the thin air, but we were motivated to reach the summit.

The Summit

After reaching the top of the Roman Headwall, we were disappointed to discover that the plateau atop Mt Baker is roughly the size of three or more football fields, with the pinnacle on the far end. Begrudgingly, we trudged across the flat snow to a small bump, hardly higher than the plateau. Finally, after just over 8 hours of hiking, we stood atop Mt Baker, basking in the vast array of mountains beneath us. While Baker is a beautiful sight, it doesn't offer good perspectives of any of the surrounding peaks - they all look insignificant from up there! The snowy cascades were reduced to mere hills standing at 3,286m (nearly 11,000 feet).

The Descent

On the way down the headwall, Blake and I encountered two elderly snowmobilers who were trying to summit after parking their sleds at the sulphur pit. We offered them our ice axes, which they readily accepted. Anthony promised to hunt them down afterwards to retrieve my tools. The way down was fairly uneventful. As Anthony zipped down on his skis, Blake and I stuck with the very exhausted Ryan and Tim until we were back relative safety before we took off to get back to the truck. It was a slushy slog down, but we made it back to the car in a round-trip time of 13.5 hours on foot. Not bad!