clmbr wrote:I remember being a few times on the summit in whiteout and being scared of taking the wrong way down, which would basically be a dead end.
I was there with friends from work climbing the Coleman Deming, a route I was intimately familiar with from guiding it many times. Hanging out at the glacier camp after summiting, slowly packing our stuff, we ran into a group of sunburnt lads, on hour 22 of their one day climb of the CD. They had summited and descended the Easton, only to realize their mistake and had to re-summit and descend the CD. Ouch.
clmbr wrote:
I used to climb Baker several times and always considered that mountain quite dangerous due to its heavily crevassed glaciers, some steep rocks, and very unreliable weather, at least when I was there
I always considered the hazards on Baker to be equal to Rainier, minus the extreme altitude of course. I’ve climbed the Coleman Headwall, the most continuously steep route on Baker, and the route the skier died on. At roughly 9k there was a serac band, unavoidable, 50 meters high and dead vertical. We climbed a chimney making the climbing quite reasonable. The remaining route to the summit plateau was a consistent 50-60 degree grade with a few crevasses. It was all definitely ‘no fall’ territory. I know from photos that the route changes character and difficultly year to year, but I wonder if the serac band was the cliff mentioned in the newspaper article.