Baker: a bike-n-ski

March 2020. On that infamous weekend when the world shut down, and I was still so new to skiing, I was skinning up towards First Pump. We were laden with crevasse rescue gear on a strange modified G1 (after it had been completely rained out that fall), to learn how to travel on glaciers. Mount Baker soared above the delta to the south of us. Nick Heatherington, one of our generous G1 instructors, told me about his experience skiing it. He re-framed Baker for me as a place I could actually go and climb (if I got good enough), not just some theoretical beautiful summit in the distance. I’ve spent every subsequent glance south on a clear Vancouver day thinking damn, I wanna ski off that thing.

March 2024. The snow started to arrive, finally, after a trying El Niño winter. Jacob Grossbard and I had gotten out for a few big ski days already and naturally, talk turned to silly self-propelled trips. We also had just met Zoe Neudorf, who had equally ridiculous bike-to-adventure ambitions, and high stoke for big missions. Jacob and I are prone to talking about a big dream for one-to-three-hundred years before getting around to doing it, so it was really Zoe’s stoke for this trip that got us in gear.

Declan’s bike may have been a little over-loaded for our shakedown ride. PC: Jacob Grossbard.

10 April 2024. There was a window in Zoe’s exam schedule (Jacob and I were fun-employed) that was looking ever better with weather. The week before we were due to leave, we did a daytrip up Pump Peak to test riding loaded bikes. This proved essential–loading a bike with skimo gear is not exactly straightforward. Skis across the top tube and seat post (but not rack) worked the best for all of us in attempts to minimize frame wobble. We skied, we self-arrested lots, we built haul systems, and most importantly, snacked, consuming 2L of chocolate milk, 6 donuts and a family size bag of doritos at the closest grocery store en route home.

16 April–Vancouver, BC

The three of us rendezvoused at Jacob’s house to pack bikes the night before. Zoe arrived after writing 3 exams in the preceding 24hrs; we spent much of the afternoon walking from store to store looking for HobNobs (don’t try NoFrills or Whole Foods around Cambie). I managed to ride close to 50km that “rest” day after a late-evening trip back to Kits for a pair of ski crampons. Even then sleep didn’t come easy, with levels of excitement through the roof!

17 April–Vancouver, BC, to Glacier, WA. 122km, 800m ride.

Typical of our time management, we were finally pedalling away at 9am. The ride to the Heliotrope Ridge trailhead is loosely done in 4 sections. Wherever you may be in Vancouver, if you can get yourself onto the Central Valley Greenway, you’ll enjoy a reasonably protected, quiet, and scenic ride to the Port Mann Bridge. Once over the bridge in Surrey, section two is a long ride to the US-Canada border on the Fraser Highway. The ride is a loud, stinky huck through the urban-sprawl pancake hellscape of the Lower Mainland. It’s a frustratingly straight line with an unending chain of red lights made only partially better by the continuous presence of a wide shoulder and a stop for Wendy’s french fries, somewhere just past Langley.

At Sumas, you cross into America and things are immediately better (do not extrapolate this comment beyond the bounds of this route description). The riding is quiet, on a gorgeous two-lane road that winds its way up into the foothills of the Cascades. In Maple Falls, the Crossroads Grocery clerk, a serious old head with a bandana holding back long silver hair, told us that we needed to detour up Silver Lake Road for what was sure to be the best water we would ever taste. He looked like he’d completely missed the end of the seventies, the sort of person you can only imagine travelling by horse or motorcycle, probably smoking darts while doing either. “Just around the corner” was a spring where water flowed right out of the hillside, he said, it was the only acceptable place to refill our nalgenes. The pipe turned out to be real (though over a kilometre away), and with bottles filled from the fountain of eternal youth, we rode on.

The fountain of youth in Maple Falls, WA. PC: Jacob Grossbard

When you hit Glacier, you turn onto a paved(!?) logging road, the fourth stage of the ride. We camped at the bottom of the road, scampering down a hill onto a gorgeous cobble/sand bar by the river. After a pile of snacks and 8oz of chocolate milk and beer each, we were ready to dig into an ENORMOUS pot of Japanese curry. Tired and full, we watched the spring sunset drain from the sky and happily crashed before the next morning’s ride.

18 April–Glacier, WA to Hogsback Ridge. 15km/880m ride, 4km/700m ski

On paper NF-39 is akin to riding up Seymour, but we were doing it on hundred-plus pound bikes, and encountered sections of much steeper grade. While a 1:1 gearing ratio was sufficient, it was not particularly enjoyable. Things got worse when early into the climb, my front thru-axle somehow dislodged itself on the threaded side of the fork and my wheel slipped partially out. I slammed the brakes, only to learn that shrieking is a less-than-effective alarm bell for riders in front of you. When I looked up, my pals had disappeared round the next corner.

Save for some surface wear on my carbon fork, things seemed fine until I reassembled things. The threads held, but the wheel was way out of dish. Somewhere in this process the reducer that holds my axle in place disappeared. The tension of clamping everything together was enough to keep the wheel spinning, I called things good enough, and rode on. Jacob had a flat further up, and we stopped for another snack (the curry from last night). There was a guided party at the trailhead engaging in myriad forms of faff. Upon seeing us pull out skis and ice axes, they remarked to each other “there’s always someone more hardcore!” We liked that.

Into the trees went our bikes, and onto our feet went our skis. And off and on and off and on…the snow was patchy for a while and then quickly required ski crampons. We camped on Hogsback Ridge and wondered where the guided party might be hiding. Dinner, sunset, huddle-cuddles while endlessly boiling water; we did all the things that make winter camping in the mountains wonderful.

Declan and Zoe boiling water in our camp on Hogsback Ridge. PC: Jacob Grossbard

19 April–Summit Day. 14km, 1500m ski.

The night had been windy and cold: We had a quick in-tent no-cook breakfast and tried to get moving early, but were stalled by some unseen law of physics that prohibits hustle when one is cold and sleepy. That, and Zoe’s boots had frozen solid and required 30 minutes of struggling and the help of another human to put on. 

I led the first steps up the Coleman glacier while Jacob and Zoe nibbled his Trader Joe’s caffeinated chocolate behind me. We experienced the absolute extremes of temperature. Whenever there was the slightest breeze in the shade, it would be freezing. As soon as we skied into a shard of early morning sun, we were shedding layers as if they were strangling us. Ski crampons were essential throughout much of the climb, and the coverage was fantastic. We questioned why many of the other climbers were skinning roped up–it was unnecessary given that there were only open serac pits and otherwise bomber bridges, but it also seemed to us that there’d be almost no chance of self-arrest.

From the Colfax-Baker col we skinned up the progressively more exposed WSW ridge of Baker. By this point we were surrounded by other climbers. If the conditions are right for a summit, I don’t think you will ever feel isolated up there.

Somewhere just below 3000m you leave the ridge and climb onto the Roman Headwall. This epic 40º SW face of the mountain rises above enormous crevasses and offers stunning views of nearby peaks and the ocean beyond. The top is the steepest and we had to punch up an icy convexity before the face mellowed out; from there it is a long skin up and across the huge summit plateau. At the end is a little bump covered in many people; the true summit. We waited our turn to ConQuEr tHE mOuNTaIn and then celebrated our unique triumph and magnificent efforts with a photo taken by someone else presumably doing exactly the same thing.

Declan setting a bootpack on the Roman Headwall. PC: Jacob Grossbard.

Declan and Zoe walking up the last mellow pitches above the Roman Headwall. Colfax peak directly behind us. PC: Jacob Grossbard.

Looking back from where we came! PC: unknown skimo bro.

Vancouver looked remarkably small out in the vast expanse of the Fraser river delta. It was cool to picture us as three (dozen) tiny bumps atop the iconic volcano shape we see rising above the horizon from Vancouver. I ripped skins, and made three of the shittiest sastrugi turns possible in front of a bunch of fancy ski mo bros, nearly biffing it twice. There, at the bottom of the bump, I lifted my chin as high as I could, and proceeded to endure a long sastrugi skate up and over the summit plateau to get back to the headwall. Jacob joined me in all this silliness, for which I was grateful.

We had lunch just above the Roman headwall, in perhaps too exposed a place, as the icy convex pitch rolled away from us in a rather dizzying way. While skiing the wall is perfectly manageable, the lack of room for error and mix of icy crud and slush made the slope intimidating. Closer inspection revealed that the steepest patch had been scraped to blue ice by repeated sideslipping and the sheer volume of skiers. We discussed our options, and each took our own approach. Knowing fear would limit her ability to make confident turns, Zoe bootpacked down the steepest section, inspiring another nervous mountaineer to rightly follow suit. Jacob exchanged a pole for an ice axe, reckoning that he could self-arrest a fall this way. Feeling good about my jump turns but knowing that I do them far better when I have a solid pole plant, I skied normally. All went.

Skis on, we hooted and hollered the rest of our way down the Roman Headwall, getting some fresh corn turns on the glacier below and nearly melting into goo in the solar oven. Back on the Coleman Glacier, we alternated between long fast swoopy corn turns and careful moments to consider where the serac falls (oft disguised as convex rollovers) might lie. Those long turns were moments of pure joy. With the crux successfully climbed and skied, all that was left to do was enjoy ourselves.

Looking back at summit of Mt. Baker above the Coleman Glacier. PC: Jacob Grossbard.

We broke camp and skied back to the trailhead, following an avalanche gulley that conveniently shortens the trail. We camped in a lovely mossy bit of forest near the trailhead, and enjoyed the most anticipated meal of the trip: ramen packs with instant mashed potatoes mixed into the broth. I was so hungry that I have no memory of what this would taste like in another situation, but it hit the spot right then and there.

Patchy snow on the way out. PC: Jacob Grossbard

The avalanche gully. PC: Jacob Grossbard

20 April–Heading home. 150km/600m ride.

We woke up at our transition point with only one thing left to do: ride home. The steepest parts of the FSR were taken with plenty of breaks so as to not burn the mineral oil out of anyone’s brakes (though Jacob’s and Zoe’s brakes still smoked most of the way down). The gentler half of the FSR and the meandering descent out of the mountains was probably the most fun I’ve ever had on a bike. We had frequent tailwinds and grades that took much but not all of the work out of pedalling, the sun was shining, we all kept smiling at each other. It was one of those moments where you feel strong and accomplished and happy; the weightless afterglow of good times had in the mountains.

Three happy riders and the mountain they skied!

A quick stop for mexican food before crossing back into Canada! PC: Zoe Neudorf

Somewhere around Aldergrove, we were refilling water in a Starbucks. Jacob remarked to me that everything felt too easy on this trip, too type one. I suggested a gratitude practice instead of hoping for something bad to happen, but it was already too late–we walked outside to see dark clouds to the north, and a cold wind picking up. Y’all better ride quick, some storybook character said to us getting out of his truck, there’s a storm a-brewin!

By Langley we were getting hammered by winds so hard it felt like we couldn’t move forward. At the southern edge of Surrey the rain started, and by the time we got to the Port Mann bridge we were in torrential downpour. While the biblical lashings Jacob summoned did their best to remind us how fleeting good times can be, we made our way into Burnaby Lake park, grateful to be off the Fraser Highway for good, and debated our perspectives on type 1, type 1.5, and type 2 fun. Somewhere in the park the rain let off for good. When we reached Vancouver, we were on the other side of the storm, the sky burned orange with the setting sun, and trains of crows streaked east back to Burnaby. We turned around to see a spectacular double rainbow projected onto the back of the storm we’d just ridden all the way through. It was magical.

Jacob and Zoe on our way back from Baker–pre storm.

Torrential downpour on the Port Mann bridge.

A gorgeous sunset ahead of us as the storm lessened off.

Looking back at the double rainbow. PC: Zoe Neudorf

Do it all again, I would take four days and break up the route exactly as we did. It’s incredible to look back on an adventure like this, and think about the half-decade of learning, skill progression, and friendship building that led me here. That storm was a dramatic end to what was otherwise an incredibly type-1 adventure. It felt pretty cool to be up on Brockton a few weeks later and look over to Baker, knowing we’d gotten there on our bikes, and skied off the top.