Coleman Pinnacle

I'm going to make a claim.  I think I'm the first person to circumnav Coleman Pinnacle, climb it free solo, and live to write about it...and brag about it.  Prove me wrong.

Beautiful weather for a two-fer, I try to get one in every summer. Started hiking about 3, passed tons of the curious faithful,

(Where are you going to ski? Over yonder ridge, ma'am.

Are you going to ski Mt Baker? Why yes, yes I am...not!

Are those Telemark skis? Nossir, but I am not unfamiliar with that term. 

Do you Telemark??? I'm sorry, I can't talk about that yet. Those days are dead to me. I'll thank u kindly sir for not stirring up painful memories of fun and failure.)

I skied 3 laps on the back side of Ptarmigan Ridge Sunday afternoon (good sabbath!), Then hiked down into the valley to camp.  I found some cool glacier scoured rocks, and set up my bivvy, in a smooth rock basin just my size.

The stars were amazing, and I saw what I think was Jupiter rising like a half moon, crescent shaped. I don't know if planets rise that way, and I am half blind, so maybe it was whole.  The wind kept the bugs away, and made for a nice cool climb up to the Coleman saddle in the morning.  I did a lap down the North side toward camp, then back up to the ridge. I tagged the top of Coleman and came down to find a marmot spreading my second lunch all over the ridge.  The crows flew off with what the marmot didn't want (the roast beef).  Skied down the South side, and headed back around Ptarmigan.  I skied one additional slope down towards the Table Mtn trail and finished back at Artist Point exactly 24 hours after I started.  Let's see. What else... Weather was perfection, suncups were small but firm, carveable but teeth chattering. I landed on my ass several times.

Oh, and one more thing. This trip was a memorial to Telemon, Bob Wiebe, who would spend several days out around Mount Baker each summer, climbing and skiing with a huge smile and a Hawaiian shirt.  Ski on forever, Bob!