Mount Baker

I set off two days ago to see Mt Baker, the northernmost major Cascade volcano in the US (there are more in Canada).  I had tried in June to get a nearer shot than from the Puget Sound (see my June 10, 2011 post), without success.

I did some research and found that there was a road, under the snow in June, that led to a place called "Artists' Point".  For those who play with Google Earth, it is at 48 50 42 N, 121 41 08 W.  It offers a wonderful view of Mount Baker.

I drove two hours from my campground at Rasar State Park.  I found

a roadway still closed, in mid-August, by the heavy snows of this past winter.  I spoke with a Ranger.  She advised that the road would not open at all this year.  The snow was simply too deep.

I asked about an alternative destination I had found on Google Earth, at the end of Glacier Creek Road.

She confirmed that that was open and would get me a good view of Mount Baker.

I set off for my alternative destination.  She was right.

It is all but impossible to convey a sense of the size of this mountain from a photo, but I am going to try.  Click on the photo and look at the extreme left side, in the band of rock above the near trees and the snow above.  See that little white line?  That is a waterfall.

I timed the drop from that little V notch near the top to the end of the first clear drop.  Water took about 3.5 seconds to drop that distance.  That makes the distance of that clear drop 196 feet.  Let's call it 200 feet.  That makes the total drop from the flat area above the small drop above that first V and clear drop, to the bottom of the double falls near the bottom, to be about 1000 feet.  On Google Earth, I make it to be 900 feet, so two separate means give close correlation.  I am going to use that first clean drop of about 200 feet as a yardstick to measure other features.

The peak of Mount Baker is wearing a beret or frisbee of snow and ice.  Several edges of this cap have broken, showing vertical cliffs of ice.

Those cliffs are about the same height as my "yardstick", or about 200 feet.  That is 200 vertical feet of ice and snow.  I guess that is not so remarkable at a spot that has gotten as much as 95 feet of snowfall in one year.  "It will cost HOW much to plow my driveway?"

The Coleman Glacier is born below that cap.  It drops west into the notch to the right of the peak, then turns and flows north.  Below this turn were some breaks with ice blocks.

The vertical faces are about 100 feet high.

The Coleman Glacier continues north to its terminus in a series of massive crevasses.  On the original photo, these are to the right of the waterfall and below and left of the peak, right at the edge of the forest.  The crevasses dwarf the old growth forest that stands between the glacier and my viewpoint.

 

Now you have all the elements to give you a sense of scale.  Take another look at that first photo, and maybe you can get a sense of what I felt, standing there and looking at this massive creation and its various features.