June 2, 2002, Easton/Squak Glacier, Mt. Baker

David and I thought it might be entertaining to summit Baker from the parking lot. Yeah right. The road off Baker Lake Road which leads to the Schreiber Meadows trailhead ... and lots of snowmobile traffic ... is open to about 2 miles (400vf) of the parking lot. We left the road at 3am. There is some skinnable snow but really it's a gravel slog until about 2/3 of a mile from the parking lot. From there we took the Railroad Grade up to Beacon Rock.

There we met up with two freinds who had camped the night before. We left Beacon Rock on skis around 7am. We did rope up about two rolls later before an area we knew would have crevaces. And sure enough around the top of the 4th roll we went climber's right around the first easily visible crevace. Climbers left is the smarter route. As we were crossing around 9:30 or 10am the snow was just beginning to soften and we did see some cracking as each person crossed one by one. Otherwise we ran into no other serious cracks on the normal route.

The Roman Wall was still firm and made for great cramponing. The shrund there is not an issue. And truth be told ... the Park Glacier headwall off the summit down to Boulder Glacier looked to have good snow as well. We summitted around 1:30pm and hung around till 2:30 then began down. The snow was firm and somewhat icy at the top and on Roman Wall, athough with my extremely dull edges i was still able to dig in, and wet and slushy at the bottom. In between was excellent spring skiing. Enjoy!

Ben Kaufman