A couple of years ago, as part of his English class assignment, Nolan wrote down a few goals he had. One was to climb Mt St Helens at age 11 and the other was to climb Mt Baker at age 12.
Earlier this year, as I was filing some of his work, I came across that paper. Realizing that his first goal had been accomplished, I wonder if we could help him achieve the next. Christian had also caught the Baker bug last year when a group of his friends had began planning a climb that never came to fruition. The will and determination was there, but they would need a support team to help them with the logistics, skills and safety issues involved.
We contacted a friend for advice, since he had summited Baker more than a dozen times and has a wealth of knowledge and experience. He not only was willing to share his knowledge, but invited us to join a group he was leading up the mountain in the coming summer.
And so, our adventure began.
It took a lot of training, planning, and three trip cancellations due to the weather, but we were finally on our way.
After hiking through the woods for a few hours, we arrived at snow level, an area known as Hogsback.
After taking a break for lunch, we practiced our self arrest skills and crevasse rescue, which is like insurance, something you hope you'll never have to use.
Off to set up our base camp at the Black Buttes.
Aren't they amazing?
Everybody pitched in to get the tents up and to melt enough snow for cooking dinner and replenish our water supply for the next day.
We had this amazing window of clear sky around us, with the clouds only closing in behind and below us.
Time to try to catch a few hours of sleep. Those who didn't mind the relentless wind beating down on their tent might have been able to rest.
At 1am our fearless and energetic leader made sure everybody was awake and getting ready for our final climb. Can you see the trail of headlights in the darkness as we started our ascent? What the camera did not capture was the amazing star filled sky and the city lights down bellow by the Frasier Valley. It was absolutely magical. It didn't take long and the sky started to get lighter with a hue of redness in the distance.
It was all uphill, nothing you could do to change that.
Here we are @ 9700 feet, with very strong wind gusts and cold temperatures, needing to make some tough & quick decisions.
One of the members of our rope team was suffering from some pretty severe altitude sickness and needed to go down. I was spent and didn't mind turning back, but Christian was going strong and was so close to the summit! I did not want to see him have to turn back.
Quickly and swiftly, ropes were re configured, which allowed Christian to continue on the last trek. Three of us turned back, so close, but yet so far! It wasn't an easy choice to make, but it was the right one.
SUMMIT!
They made it!
Not much time was spent up there. The winds were so strong, up to 60 mph wind gusts, Nolan just had to throw himself down and bury his ice axe to stay in place when those gusts hit. however, not even the unpleasant conditions could keep the smiles from their faces.
Better than the views, adventures and summits, was getting to spend time with this great group of wonderful people.
Now one more obstacle layed ahead of us. The bridge over the creek right at the beginning of the trail was washed out by an avalanche earlier in the year, and now you have to bush whack, go down a ravine and cross a log over rushing waters. It was all fun & games the day before, 5 minutes into our adventure. But now, after two days of having spent every ounce of your energy, it just seemed like another mountain. Not to mention it had started to drizzle making the log quite slippery.
We all made it across, back to our cars and down to Chair 9 to celebrate by ordering "Mt Baker" pizzas.
This was truly an amazing experience! So glad I was able to share it with two of our boys.
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