First Timer On Mount Baker, The Making Of A Mountaineer

by Jack­son Holtz, Moun­tain Mad­ness Climber

I’m tied in at the end of a climb­ing rope, fac­ing the dread­ed Roman Head­wall at 10,000 feet on the south face of Mount Bak­er, the 10,778-foot peak near the Cana­di­an bor­der in West­ern Wash­ing­ton. I’ve been climb­ing all morn­ing and this is the final push for the summit.

Mark, my guide and the lead climber, has decid­ed to take a route straight up the brown-col­ored ice of the 35-degree slope. The rest of the team is above me, kick­ing down loose pieces of pumice. I lean into the wall of ice and let my hel­met do its job. Then I call out for the team to halt.

“How the hell am I sup­posed to climb this?” I shout up to Mark, who is three climbers ahead of me and almost over the crest of the headwall.

“The same way we learned yes­ter­day,” Mark shouts back. ​“Kick your front points into the ice and climb.”

I’m not reas­sured. What I want to do is turn around and go home. I want to give up, but I can’t. I’m roped in, in more ways than one, to a climb­ing team. I’ve paid a lot of mon­ey, and I’ve trained all sum­mer. I keep going.

I’m not a moun­taineer. I’m a desk job guy, in my mid-30’s with an ever-increas­ing waist size that comes from a seden­tary lifestyle. I decid­ed to make a change, but I need­ed a goal. Ear­ly in the spring, I decid­ed to climb Mount Bak­er. I did research and found Moun­tain Mad­ness, a guid­ing com­pa­ny that offered a group trip over the three-day Labor Day week­end. The tim­ing gave me all sum­mer to train. This pudgy, mid-career pro­fes­sion­al signed up for an adventure.

I start­ed train­ing imme­di­ate­ly to get into shape to make it up and down Bak­er. The mate­ri­als I received explained that no pre­vi­ous expe­ri­ence was nec­es­sary, but the bet­ter con­di­tion my legs, lungs and heart were in, the more fun I’d have on the moun­tain. My reg­i­men includ­ed work­ing out with a train­er: doing squats and lunges and work­ing with uneven sur­faces to improve my bal­ance. I did dips and pull ups to ​“be able to haul my ass out of a crevasse,” as my train­er said. I rose ear­ly to climb stairs, jog and ride my bike. And most impor­tant, I went on long train­ing hikes with increas­ing elevation.

After count­less trips to REI and oth­er out­door gear shops, the week­end final­ly came. I checked and dou­ble checked my gear list and final­ly went to sleep for my last night in civ­i­liza­tion. The time had come.

I met up with the two guides, Mark and Michael, and the rest of the group of six guys, five of them begin­ning climbers, too. The weath­er fore­cast for the North Cas­cades was clear and warm with light winds — per­fect for climb­ing. I was scared to death.

The six-hour hike to base camp car­ry­ing a 60-pound pack was excru­ci­at­ing. The first mile or so of the hike wan­dered through a most­ly flat mead­ow with a cou­ple of riv­er cross­ings. These were made hairy by nar­row logs that were dif­fi­cult to man­age with all the weight on my back. One climber asked the guide if this is what the trail was like all the way up. ​“No,” he answered, ​“this is flat.”

After climb­ing 3,500 feet to about 6,500 feet of ele­va­tion, we set up high camp on a ledge at the foot of the Eas­t­on glac­i­er. The views over the North Cas­cades, the San Juan Islands, Van­cou­ver Island and the Olympic Penin­su­la only got bet­ter dur­ing the lengthy sun­sets offered by the high altitude.

We spent that evening and the entire next day prepar­ing for our sum­mit climb. Dur­ing the day we learned self-arrest tech­niques, how to walk in cram­pons and walk­ing as a rope team. The rest of our time was spent prepar­ing our gear for the sum­mit climb and eat­ing as much moun­tain grub as pos­si­ble. Despite my usu­al­ly insa­tiable appetite, I could bare­ly eat — a com­bi­na­tion of nerves and altitude.

“Hey guys, it’s 2:30 am,” my tent mate, Den­nis, woke me up say­ing. ​“Aren’t we sup­posed to be up?”

We got up and quick­ly col­lect­ed our gear and downed some break­fast. All I could stom­ach was some hot tea and an oat bar. We were ready to climb. We roped up in the dark, and with head lamps ablaze, start­ed to climb. Soon we were high up on the glacier.

Every hour or so we stopped for a quick break. Since I was work­ing hard, my body and clothes were drenched with sweat, and I felt cold in the chilly morn­ing air. I also lacked car­bo­hy­drates and was shiv­er­ing. I ate a pack­age of Goo, the thick syrupy gel that pro­vides fuel for ath­letes. It tast­ed good.

We kept going. In the ear­ly morn­ing dusk, I watched Mount Rainier become awash in the bril­liant hues of the sun­rise. I also began to see in fuller light the route we were cov­er­ing, includ­ing the nar­row snow bridges over seem­ing­ly bot­tom­less crevass­es. Some­how, no one men­tioned eight-inch wide, melt­ing snow bridges in the mar­ket­ing materials.

Steep­er and steep­er. I ate hard can­dies to pass the time and keep my sug­ar lev­el up. I added a lay­er as a cold breeze picked up as we gained ele­va­tion. Final­ly, we set out on our final push and came to the Roman Headwall.

I kicked into the ice, and start­ed climb­ing, like a lad­der, one foot on top of the oth­er. My cram­pons held, and after about 20 feet of climb­ing, I was off the ice and onto the loose pumice for the final 20 feet of the headwall.

Once I’d topped the Roman Head­wall, the domed top felt easy, but pre­car­i­ous. On one side was a sev­er­al-thou­sand-foot drop into the crater of the vol­cano where sul­fur fumes seeped from gap­ing vents. On the oth­er side was a huge crevasse, sev­er­al-hun­dred feet wide with a glac­i­er the size of a city sky­scraper slow­ly break­ing away.

Sud­den­ly I real­ized I made it. I was stand­ing on top of Mount Bak­er with tears stream­ing down my face. I had set out to climb a moun­tain, and I’d done it. I was fit, strong and stand­ing on my own two feet.

Back down in the van on the way back to civ­i­liza­tion, after 16 hours of hik­ing, three days of hard work and stand­ing on the tallest moun­tain in the North Cas­cades, I had moun­tain climber’s high — a mix­ture of exhaus­tion, dehy­dra­tion, hypox­ia and spent ambi­tion com­bined with the glow of meet­ing my goal. Despite, and per­haps because of, being scared to death and pushed to new lim­its, I knew then that I would do this again. After all, now I’m a mountaineer.