Next Time Round
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So. We drove up to the North Cascades from Bellingham after spending a night there and doing some last-minute shopping and packing. We hoped to ski in and camp at Lake Ann, which is typical of those attempting the Chimneys route over two days. We planned on arriving early, making camp, eating, getting some rest, then starting our climb around midnight. We had heard reports of very heavy snow and high temperatures, and we figured the only way we'd have a chance at the route was to climb at night while things were frozen, and be down by 11am before the avalanches, which we might ourselves be triggering, started to slide.
We didn't know the half of it. We arrived at Mt. Baker Ski Resort around 10am, a little later than I had hoped, but, at the time, not at an hour we felt was anything to worry about. Normally you would drive up a gravel road to trailhead #600 and head into Lake Ann via a "trail." When we pulled into the resort parking lot we caught up with some of the snowcat operators and asked which way to the road. Because, you see, we're not from around here. The road was Nowheresville. The road was under multiple feet of snow. We were looking at skinning the approach right out of the parking lot. This would make the normally enjoyable (or so we hear) 3.6 mile approach more like 5+ miles. We would need to ski up, steeply, and around Panorama Dome to a point where we would drop into a drainage and valley proper, which would lead us to Lake Ann and the western flanks of Mt. Shuksan. Luckily the guy at the resort was very helpful, instructing us to follow the snowcat track up and around the dome until we would "drop in somewhere" over Austin Pass. It made sense on the map, but never having been there before and being confronted with mass whiteness was a bit disillusioning. I began to wonder what the route might look like, what with all of this snow. Only one way to find out. We saddled up and got sliding. |
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