Mt. Baring

It was opening day of the 1998 scrambling season for me. Walt Reissig was leading a trip to the impressive looking Mt. Baring. If you are heading east from Seattle on highway 2, you will be able to see Mt. Baring (on a clear day) a few miles before reaching the cutoff for the town on Index. It will be the peak that appears to be leaning left (north). If you have read any of my previous trip reports, you will know Walt (Mr. Orange Shirt if you are trying to figure out who is who in the pictures) and Julie (the red head), so I will hence forth just refer to them as Julie and Walt. Our group was to meet up at the small grocery store in the town of (you guessed it) Baring. Baring is quite small. It may even rival the size of my own home town (200, 210 if you include the cows). As we pulled up I used a technique that Walt had taught me in the past, "look to see how many tall, skinny, long-legged folks are in the group" to see if you were going to be able to keep up. Just our luck, about half the group fit the "speedster" profile. Once the group was gathered, we convoyed out to the trailhead where we would park our cars. At the trail head there is a nice "open air" toilet (meaning just a seat, no walls, curtains etc.) behind a boulder. In order to let folks know you were "using the facilities", you would put a cap or some item on top of the boulder to signify "In Use". Everyone was anxious to get going, so we got our gear together and headed off, getting started around 7:50 a.m. It was a beautiful, sunny day. Mt. Baring has both a north and south summit, the north summit being the true summit. Our route was to head from the cars up to the ridge which extends west from meadows just below the saddle which separates the north and south summit. We would then follow the ridge to the meadows where we would climb up a snow gully to the saddle and then head for the north summit. For the first few hundred yards we were on an abandoned Forest Service road. Soon though, we were at our cut off point. The next 1500 feet or so were almost straight up what is called here in Washington a "climbers path" but what most folks would call an almost non-existent trail. The climbers path paralleled a stream for a bit and then veered off into a more wooded area. It was not long before we were up on the ridge. We took a short break and then headed off towards the meadows. As we neared the meadows, we came to a cliffy area which forced us to drop down a bit to the south in order to avoid rocky area. The south side of the ridge was very hard and icy as it was early in the day and the slope had not softened up. We kicked steps in a rising traverse and finally reached the meadows. The sun was out, the meadows were snow covered, it was a wonderful place to be. The meadows were so enchanting I decided that I would come and camp here overnight next year. We took a rest, ate a few bites, gooped on the sunscreen and headed up towards the saddle. The gully which leads to the saddle can avalanche if the conditions are right. Luckily, the snow conditions were stable. Getting up to the saddle was actually the most tiring part of the day, the gully had some soft snow and we were breaking through every few steps. It makes for a good quad burner. Once we all reached the saddle, it was time to make the last stretch to the summit. Our first obstacle was to had up a 30-40 ft. snow wall. I was worried that the snow was going to be so soft that climbing the snow wall would end up sapping all my energy. We were in luck, Walt started up the wall and reported that the snow was very solid. The good snow conditions above the saddle made for a very enjoyable scramble to the summit. Once at the summit (4 1/2 hours after leaving the cars), we ate lunch and lounged around for close to an hour. The sky was hazy, but the nearby snow capped peaks held our attention. One of the closer peaks caught my eye. Gunn Peak seemed to have a very interesting route to it's summit as well as being very aesthetic. I am going to try and talk Walt into doing this peak with me in the future. After eating and snapping many photos, we decided to head down. The snow had softened up enough that we were able to plunge step back down to the snow wall and then down climb to the saddle. We then sat on our rumps and glissaded down to the meadows. We headed back toward the ridge line we had walked on in the morning and even the icy sections had softened up a bit. Once we reached the old climbers trail which led from the ridge back down to the cars, we headed down. This was actually the hardest part of the day. Going up a wet, muddy trail was not easy, but descending that same trail certainly kept the mind focused. We were almost back down to the Forest Service road when about five feet from the road I slipped and landed butt first in the mud. Apparently, seconds before Walt had said to Julie "Well Julie, the trail only has five more feet to try and get you". I guess the Trail thought I was Julie. Once on the road, we made the short five minute walk to the car and asked a hiker coming by to take our pictures. The only thing left now was to eat a hamburger at Zeeks on the way home. Yum! A perfect start to the season.