Kulshan… not the brewery, but the mountain! It’s also known as Mt. Baker, but the indigenous peoples of the PNW have named this volcano, Kulshan, which translates to “White Sentinel.” With the amount of snow this mountain receives each winter, I find the name very appropriate.

I’ve been to Baker a few times to hike, but I’ve never thought about climbing it until it was chosen for our BCC team’s grad climb! The students opted for the Coleman-Deming route, and a start time of 7:30am on Saturday… meaning we’d have to leave Seattle at around 4:00am, UGH. Luckily, Jen has a SWEET adventure van! Thus, on Friday night, Jen, Patricia, Liz, and I went out to the trail head, to get a full night’s rest!

WE’RE GONNA GO CLIMB A MOUNTAIN, Y’ALL!

#adventuretime

We got to the trailhead at around 11pm, slept til 6am, ate breakfast, and met up with the rest of our team. We started on time-ish and worked our way up to Heliotrope ridge fairly easily. Here was our first view of the objective!

Shortly after, we roped up and started our ascent of Coleman Glacier

Another team was also heading up. Baker, Colefax, and Lincoln peaks in view!

Our team thought about using a low camp, but decided to climb a bit more, to make the summit push just a little bit shorter

So determined

What happens when you climb with a buncha engineers? you planespot!

#747

We set up camp just above a group of ski-mountaineers at around 1:30pm

We had an early dinner and most of the team went to bed early