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Church Mountain

Planning to get to training for Mt. Baker in 3 weeks, myself, paul, and mike looked for a hike that would challenge us both physically and mentally as far as our hiking and mountaineering skills go. The target: Church Mountain. A nice hard hike to great ridge walking and a summit scramble. The hike was pretty much snow free until just 300-400 feet below the meadows. But not knowing where the trail was after our stopping point from a previous hike (in the dead middle of winter) we chose to climb up a chute and onto the ridge above. Longer route we found later, but it made the trip that much more challenging.

To the Ridge

With all the chutes out of the way we started out on the ridge. We decided to go below the high ridge and traverse toward the summit.

To the high Ridge

After a steep acent up a chute to the top of the ridge we began to make our way for the summit. There were snowmobile tracks going up and down each side of the ridge coming up to the top in some places! Crazy snowmobilers.

The Decent

After a windy summit we decided to head down beacuse of rain moving in. Since paul and mike came quite unprepared with no shell pants they were forced to make "Glissade Diapers" out of their shell jackets to glissade down to the meadows. With their diapers securely fastened we started our decent down to the meadows.

Heading Down the Trail

A quick hour and half later we were at the car and ready for a hot shower and a nap. Mabye a few beers too.

In the End

Overall it was a great trip with alot of great practice for our trip up baker.

Images

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