Mount Baker Summit Climb

Mount Baker commands the skyline 30 miles east of Bellingham, Washington, and is the highest peak in Mount Baker Wilderness. Captain George Vancouver named it in 1792 to honor an officer on his ship, but to the Northwest's Nooksack people, Mount Baker was always known as White Rock Mountain. It was aptly named: In the 1998-99 season, Baker received the U.S. record for the most snowfall in one season—1,140 inches. (600 inches is average.)

British artist/botanist/climber Edmund T. Coleman is credited with the first ascent of Mount Baker, a feat that took him three tries. On his first attempt he never made it past the Skagit River. The second time, his team came within 50 feet of the summit, but was thwarted by a cornice of ice that theretofore has been known as the Coleman saddle. In 1868 he and his team crossed 27 crevasses before making the summit. (Coleman was reportedly the first mountaineer to use an ice axe in America, and he also introduced his teammates to crampons.) At the top he wrote:"The scene was grand in the nakedness of its desolation. The white surface of the snow was unrelieved by a single rock. We felt cut off from the world we had left. Overhead the sun poured down his bright beams from a sky which formed a dome of purplish blue, unsullied by a cloud. We felt at Heaven's gate, and in the immediate presence of the Almighty."

If only we could have a similar experience. Our first day at base camp had started in clouds, and by noon it hadn't improved. We spent the morning on a snowy slope learning basic climbing techniques: cutting steps in snow, the French technique, the rest step, how to carry an ice axe, and most important, how to use it for self arrest. Wet and tired, we ate lunch huddled around the camp stove as snow and sleet pelted our backs. We retreated to our tents, the summit more elusive than ever.