Is the Pleasure Worth the Pain?

It’s been a while, sorry about that. For the past two weeks, Aidan and I have been navigating the challenge of storing climbing gear and clothing for two people in the back of a Honda Odyssey while maintaining some sort of sanity. It hasn’t gone well. We both smell pretty bad and I can’t find my belt because it’s buried underneath fifty pounds worth of snow gear. After picking Aidan up from SeaTac Airport, we booked it to Bellingham, Washington, to get ready for our crevasse rescue course on Mt. Baker. Even from our very first day, something managed to go wrong nearly every single day. On the way to the trailhead for the course, my exhaust popped back off and started hanging from the car, scraping from the road. After Aidan jerry-rigged a strand of cordelette to the exhaust, the roof box opened at 80 MPH on the highway, dumping my snow shovel into the middle lane of I-5. Something didn’t want us on the mountain. We powered on, determined to not let our $900 course go to waste.

“This 3-day course is a thorough introduction to the bare minimum skills necessary to climb glaciated peaks in a party led by a more seasoned climber.” Aidan and I planned to summit just a few days after this course on our own, obviously. So we spent the next 3 days picking the guides’ brains, getting any sort of info we could about going up with a two person team and trying to convince them we weren’t completely stupid. Somehow I walked away from the course seemingly more confused than when I walked in after spending a total of 40 minutes practicing how to set up a crevasse rescue out of three days on the mountain.

Our class moving up the glacier

Just a few days later, Aidan and I were back at the trailhead. Two naive and eager mountaineers. After arriving over five hours late, I realized that I had no idea where my BRAND NEW action camera was. So we tore my car apart, searching for the smallest $300 you’ve ever seen. Nowhere. ‘Damn,’ I thought, ‘at least I can still shoot with my big camera.’ Nope! Somehow, during the search, I had broken two of my ND filters, rendering me unable to shoot video. In just 30 minutes, my spirits were completely crushed as I realized all my creative visions were smashed in front of me.

However, we pushed on. We had no choice. It was already almost 7 P.M, and we had over 2 miles and 2,000 feet to make to camp, with some of the heaviest backpacks we’ve ever carried on our backs. So we embraced the bullshit, and started walking. We made good time on the approach, arriving at camp shortly before sunset, thankful to finally be on the mountain. We quickly set up camp, pissed off at the day, but still finding the mental space to appreciate just how lucky we were to be in the position we were in at the moment. Camping above the clouds is, as it seems, pretty damn cool.

The sunsets on Baker are unreal.

After settling into bed, Baker had it’s way with us. A sleepless, cold, and windy night full of “is the tent going to fly away?” After Shasta, I was extra worried. Just when it got a little quieter and you finally started to drift off to sleep, it would start right back up again. So we tossed and turned all night, just hoping we didn’t have to jump out of our sleeping bags to wrestle a free flying tent onto a glacier. Thankfully, we didn’t, and woke to a beautiful, calm morning on the mountain.

Our itinerary for this climb was to spend a day practicing and refining our newly learned glacier skills on the slopes of the glacier right next to our camp. For over nine hours we toiled away, making slight adjustments to our method until we were sure we could pull the other out in an emergency situation. Through sheer stupidness we managed to dial it in enough for both of us to rattle off the steps one by one all the way through. We coined it Carter and Aidan’s Organic Homemade Crevasse Rescue, New England Style. With the sun nearing it’s departure from the horizon, we settled into bed with a hot meal, preparing ourselves for what lay ahead, feeling confident in ourselves that we would make the summit tomorrow.

12:30 A.M. My alarm goes off. I’ve been awake for thirty minutes. The mountain is dead quiet, with only the whispers of a breeze breaking the silence. I look over at Aidan, who’s also been awake for the last thirty minutes. We know what we have to do. We break out of our cocoons, thankful for modern down sleeping bags, and began to prep for our summit day. This is always the low point of the day. You’re tired, hungry, thirsty, cold, and pissed that you’re missing out on another 7 hours of beauty sleep. This time, we were wired. Mt. Baker had been taunting us for a total of five days before this, and we didn’t want to spend another day without going higher.

After spending far too long getting our gear ready that was '“already ready” the night before, we set off around 2 A.M from Hogsback Camp. Our route, up the Coleman Deming Glacier would take us 3 miles and 4,800 vertical feet to the summit of Mt. Baker. The Coleman Deming route on Mt. Baker is considered to be the perfect first glaciated route for budding mountaineers like us. And after the experience we had on this mountain, I see why. Immediately, we went from hard frozen snow to rock, and almost fell multiple times within eyesight of our camp. Once we got back on the snow, it was a highway from there.

We booked it up the route, making steady progress early on. We reached the farthest point we had gone with the class fairly quickly, which boosted our confidence. We travelled up the glacier with only our headlamps and the faint lights of Vancouver to guide us. Navigating crevasses and moats with only each other to trust. Thankfully, the lower part of the route is pretty stable with just a few short crevasses, so we weren’t too worried. Nonetheless, we were still on our best behavior and were careful not to get too complacent. The upper glacier is a different story. 

The upper glacier of Baker

As we neared the upper glacier, the sky came alive. I’ve probably said this multiple times before, but I cannot understate it. The beauty of a mountain sunrise is undescribable. Watching the full spectrum of colors dance across the sky and the snow as the world comes alive is an experience I think everyone should have in their life. As we topped out on the glacier and began to traverse across to the summit plateau, we crested a small hill and witnessed ice fall the size of skyscrapers. We stood at the lip (roped up) and peered down into complete and utter black, hundreds of feet below us. Up until now, this had felt like any other climb I had done before, but seeing the full scale and destructive power of the glacier up close was unlike anything I had ever seen before.

Part of why I do this is to feel small. The mountain doesn’t care about you, your ego, or your hopes and dreams. This had never rang true in my mind more than it did right this moment. Standing there at the lip of a portal to hell, I no longer cared about any of the ‘problems’ that had been on my mind just a few hours ago. After gawking for a few more minutes, we picked up and began to make our way across the ice fields, all while under the watch of a massive ice serac sitting hundreds of feet above us. This was the most objectively dangerous part of the route, and so we hurried along, not looking to be deleted from the glacier by a school bus sized piece of ice taking us out. 

Don’t let the perspective fool you. These are hundreds of feet tall

We made it to the base of the Roman Wall making good time, which marked our final push to the summit plateau. It was at this point where we got surprisingly cold while taking our last break. It wasn’t looking good for the summit if we were cold down here. We chose to traverse right instead of climbing the Roman Wall directly, as it looked too steep for us. However, instead of following the trail all the way to the connector with the Easton Glacier route, we got bored and just marched straight up a 35 degree snow slope with 2,000 feet of runout below it. It was at this point where we got surprisingly hot. Maybe it was the few hundred feet of steep climbing we were doing or the scorching sun that had finally caught up to us, but we were sweating bullets.

Heading up our own route. (Mt. Baker first ascent)

But we pushed on, and eventually crested the summit plateau, with the true summit in sight just a few hundred feet in front of us. We quickly made our way to the summit block, unroped, and climbed the last few feet to the summit of Mt. Baker, at (feet.) We were rewarded with the most breathtaking view I had ever seen. The entirety of the North Cascades were laid out in front of me, with clouds poking in and out of the jagged peaks. Mt. Shuksan stood firm just a few miles away, inspiring us to return one day to stand on its summit. When we summited, we were the only people up there, and so we laid out all our things, and baked in the sun for over an hour. It took a few minutes for everything to set in, but I couldn’t help feeling a strong sense of peace when it did. Although Baker wasn’t our main objective for this trip, I felt like we had accomplished what we came here to do. After writing a quick note in the logbook at the summit, I laid down and took it all in. It felt almost as if my life had entered a new chapter, and if I wasn’t sure before then I was completely sure now that this was what I wanted to do for the rest of my life. Standing there, short of breath, sweating, and sunburnt on the summit of Mt. Baker, I felt completely full. 

Mt. Shuksan, as seen from the summit of Baker

After our nap on the summit, we reluctantly picked up our belongings and started back down the mountain, blazing our way back to camp. Although the mountains are our favorite place to be, we were hungry. And we needed food now. So, after grabbing all our things from camp, we started back down the trail, making decent time back to the trailhead (my legs hurt). We flew out of there, beelining it to the nearest restaurant we could find. 

The words I write here today will never be able to fully encapsulate the time we spent on the slopes and summit of Baker, and neither will the photos I took. But if there’s one thing that I can get across here, it’s that if things get hard, you’re doing the right thing. I don’t even know how long I’ve been out here at this point, and I’ve spent thousands of dollars doing what I’m doing, but I knew in my heart that if I didn’t do this I’d forever regret it. So, is the pleasure worth the pain? In my eyes, the pain is part of the pleasure. I earned this, and sacrificed a lot to get here, whether I wanted to or not (I’ve spent over $500 on replacing camera gear). Get out there, challenge yourself, and be scared. Maybe even upend your life and leave your girlfriend for four months because you want to climb mountains. It might really suck, but would you rather be comfortable or proud? You decide. 

Anyway, we’ll be back in a few days. Heading to a very special mountain in the heart of Olympic National Park tomorrow morning. Till next time.