On Sat July 7 and 8 a group of six (Kirk, Jill, Claire, Rainer, Mike, me) head up climb Baker up the North Ridge.
At 6000' we chatted with Kurt the climbing ranger on North Ridge route conditions. He remembered my Baker Coleman group from the previous weekend. He said the snow and ice on the route where in fine shape and that the snow had frozen on Fri night. He also expected cloud cover on Sat night and Sun. He pointed out a nice campsite area on rock off to the left at around 6500' that was next to water and away from the busy (potentially noisy) growing tent village.
After we made camp on Sat afternoon Rainer, Claire and I scouted out the route heading out on a bearing of 100 degrees. We walked far enough (maybe .5 mile out) so we could get a good view over the crevasse field and scope out a route through and up to the bergschund. We saw a faint bootrack route heading through and up and left past ice cliffs and then heading up. Rainer took a bearing of 74 degrees that would get us through in the dark the next morning. We headed back to camp and had dinner. Around 9pm I got up and spoke with a nearby solo climber who was also going to do north ridge.
We woke up at midnight to hear from Jill and Kirk that Mike was vomiting, cold and not doing too well. Kirk decided to stay and monitor Mike. The other four of us (Rainer, Claire, Jill, me) headed out. The solo climber had already left. Rainer did a great job on route finding through the crevasse field and up and past the bergschund. We did a group huddle to discuss the weather as the clouds, light rain and winds were picking up. Small rocks and ice were coming off the rock band above and whistling past ... which made it 'exciting'.
We decided to turn around and get lunch at Graham's in Glacier. On the way back we spoke with two skiers who mentioned that the solo climber had also turned around. We headed back to camp and packed up gear. We noticed a number of teams that had attempted the Coleman route returning early, we suspect also due to the weather conditions. Mike was doing much better so we headed back to the trail head, clean clothes and lunch.
A fun weekend out with good friends.
Pics here.