Trip Report
Basic Glacier Climb - Mount Baker/Coleman Glacier
Route DOES NOT GO. Snow bridge / crevasse collapse at 8800 feet.
Troy Mason
- Sat, Jul 6, 2019 — Sun, Jul 7, 2019
- Basic Glacier Climb - Mount Baker/Coleman Glacier
- Mount Baker/Coleman Glacier
- Climbing
- Turned Around
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- Road rough but passable
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Partial text from warning signs. See images for full text: IMPORTANT NOTICE: MAJOR OBJECTIVE HAZARDS ON COLEMAN DEMING ROUTE. On Thursday June 13 a snow bridge spanning a large crevasse at 8800 feet collapsed. This bridge had been the main route across the crevasse. As an alternative, some climbing parties chose to end run the crevasse to the climber's left. However, this route travels close to hanging ice and loose rock in the area known as the Roman Mustache. These are major objective hazards that should not be underestimated. They have the potential to collapse without warning, possibly causing serious injury or death.
Due to danger of ice and rock fall and the impassable crevasse, we did not attempt the summit. We practiced snow travel, made a nice camp, slept about 7200 feet, and retreated in the morning. Sadly, we were in pea soup and did not get sunset or sunrise views :(
I spoke with two separate parties descending who had climbed the North Ridge. They both had to rappel down the crevasse/ice fall, and said there wasn't a route up from our position without lead climbing the ice. I highly recommend calling the ranger station for a condition update before embarking on this climb for summer 2019.