Corn Ch-Powder on Mt Baker

Submitted by: g3 on: 31 August 2010 - 01:59pm

Some people just can’t wait for winter. Much like the Traslins we blogged about recently, friends of G3 Jamie & Lotte Bond also knew where to find the goods close to home this summer. After learning they wouldn’t make it down to South America this summer, they knew they had to get their fix soon, somehow. So they dusted off their G3’s, piled in the car, and headed South, but for only a few kilometers! Mt Baker was the call for the weekend, still boasting a massive snowpack that looked more like May, not the last day of July.

As with any summer ski trip the boarder guard had his fair share of questions, as did the crampon-clad mountaineers at the trailhead. But like any eager skier, Jamie & Lotte knew the skis were anything but out of place. There was 7000 feet of potential corn shredding above them, who would want to walk past that without boards on their feet?

After milking the summer weather and hazy forest-fire sunset at camp, they leisurely slept in while white headlamp dots of mountaineer groups worked their way up the mountain. After all, skiers don’t need as much time right? Sometimes right.

By the time they woke up, geared up, and climbed to the top of 10,781 ft (3,286 m) Mt Baker, it was just them and a lone mountaineer topping out on the peak. Why? Probably because of those ominous clouds that just rolled in and shrouded the peak, bringing with them rain, then sleet, then snow!

Sure they couldn’t see their way down the mountain, but they were the only people within miles skiing freshies on July 31! Amidst the Pacific Northwest’s driest July in recent history, you could say the storm was a wee bit unexpected, much to the dismay of climbers down below the freezing level. But the storm wasn’t completely unappreciated. For the two slow-moving skiers on the summit, the fresh powder-coated corn shredding was just the fix they needed, until the snow falls again in November.