Wednesday, June 21, 2006

Shake and Bake 2006

A quick one. Just wanted to share some pics. Perhaps I'll write more later. My cousin Liza and I went on a climbing trip in the North Cascades of Washington state. Named the trip "Shake and Bake 2006" in honor of our proposed destination, Mt. Baker and Mt. Shucksan. Incliment weather kept us from getting to Mt. Shucksan as we decided to concentrate all our efforts on Baker. One night we finally saw our goal.



After so many days of uncooperative weather, we had one last day in which to go for the summit. We heard conflicting weather reports from the weekend warrior who were coming up from their offices, some even turned around as soon as they got there. Lize and I went to sleep with a seriously overcasted sky, ever hopeful in the positive sounding forecasts. At midnight, I awoke and looked up through the open fly of the tent to a miraculously stary sky. The gods had smiled upon us, practicing our crevasse rescue skills and other glacial mountaineering skills. They were going to give us a chance. It was an excellent moment. We awoke at 3am to other climbers on their way up, and we hurridly got our things together and headed up by headlight on the cold hard snow.


The climb was straighforward with some steep snow, and some crevasses along the route but nothing that was uncomfortable. The views were outstanding and we soon found ourselves on the summit with a few other climbers.


This last picture is my favorite. The view looking east from the summit.


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