Mt. Herman

November 13-14 (Sat-Sun), 2004

I had pretty much hung up my hiking boots for the season, not expecting to get out again for awhile. Lo and behold, George calls up on Wednesday and says that he has been snowshoeing over the past few weekends on daytrips, but wants to spend the night out. Yipee!

I was stuck in town on Saturday until noon ( a puppy we were fostering was getting adopted), so George picked me up around 12:30. We reached the end of Mt. Baker Hwy, the upper parking area for the ski area, and were on the trail at 2:00. The sun goes down around 4:30, so we figured we would see where we were at 4:00 and pick out a campsite at that time.

We had packed snowshoes, ice axes, and 1 shovel, as George’s recent trips had revealed roughly 3 feet of snow at the trailhead. Unfortunately, it had rained pretty steadily over the past week, and a lot of the snow had melted. We never used the snowshoes – there were short sections where they would have been helpful, but we were never on snow for a long enough period to use them. We would have had to frequently take them off so that we could walk on rocks or navigate through tight underbrush. I guess later in the winter, once more snow has fallen, the underbrush and rocks are covered up. So, the snowshoes stayed on our packs for the entire trip.

Mt Herman is situated across Bagley Lake from Table Mountain. If you take the Chain Lakes loop hike, starting near Bagley Lake and walking the loop counter-clockwise, the first pass you cross is the saddle between Table Mtn and Mt Herman, with Herman on your right. The route we followed was this (roughly): start at the upper ski area parking lot; drop down and cross the drainage of Bagley lakes; continue left along the Chain Lakes trail towards Bagley lake; turn right and steeply up (off trail) and follow a rigdeline up Herman, roughly even with the fancy stone bridge below the visitor’s center; set up camp. Next day: follow coulior (gully) and drainage down Herman, dumping us out on the Chain Lakes trail 1/4 mile before the place we left the trail yesterday.

This was my first experience walking off trail with moderate snow levels. This, I think, is actually more difficult than if there was more snow. With deep snow, you can usually kick in good steps and just march right up. However, the snow was not deep enough for kick steps in most places. Instead we had to gingerly place our feet on the snow and do our best to avoid sliding. While in deeper snow it is easiest to place your foot in the leader’s footsteps, with these conditions I would often slip out of George’s steps, because his foot compressed the snow into an icy slush. So I followed near, but not exactly in, his footsteps.

Another new trick I learned was the importance of using underbrush and small trees as handholds. Any living thing sticking out of the ground became a fixed line, supporting my weight as I tried new footholds.

As a side note, I started rock climbing this past summer in an effort to increase my comfort level when hiking and scrambling in the mountains. This was the first trip where these skills paid off. I realized I trusted my boots on smaller edges, I was more aware of my center of gravity, and was able to balance on small holds in relative comfort. One particularly intimidating segment we encountered was a 20 ft section of mossy, slabby rock, bordered on one side by a small creek/drainage. With my right foot in the drainage and my left on small edges in the rock, shifting my weight to my upper foot with each step, I found that I progressed quickly, safely, and comfortably.

This narrative makes it sound as if we slowly and gingerly inched up the mountain, which is not entirely true. I suppose the places that stick in my memory were the most technical, and therefore required the techniques described above. In reality, we move pretty quickly (1400 off-trail feet in elevation in about 2 hours).

We reached the false summit at the top of ridge (and right next to the coulior we would descend the next day) by about 4:00. Using George’s shovel, we leveled an area for his Megamid tent (floorless, one-pole, circus tent lookalike). The views at this point were marvelous: the silhouette of Baker was outstanding and Shuksan glowed with the sunset. However, there were dark clouds approaching from the coast, and we were soon engulfed in them. We oriented the tent so that we could eat dinner with a view of Baker out our front porch. This turned out to not be a great idea for two reasons. First, by the time we settled in, all views were gone due to lack of light. Secondly, and increasingly more important as the night went on, the wind was blowing at us from that direction.

Dinner was Thai noodles with peanut sauce, rice and tuna, assorted chocolate and nuts, hot chocolate, and freeze dried apple something (cobbler?) for dessert. George tends to bring out mystery desserts on these trips, his excuse being that we need something with lots of calories to warm us for bed. Sometimes I think he should come up with a better excuse or a better dessert. I am reminded at this point of a certain cheesecake consumed on the slopes of Ruth Mountain (another story entirely).

I was borrowing George’s super warm sleeping bag, and though the temperatures probably approached freezing over night, I woke up sweating at least once. The wind picked up over night, and by morning miniscule snowdrifts had formed at our feet. We ate a quick (read “cold”) breakfast and packed up in blowing snow, with maybe 50-100 feet visibility. I believe we left camp at around 8:00.

Our descent was just out the back door, and we quickly switched from hiking poles to ice axes due to the steepness of the slope. At one point the slope became so steep that we turned around and faced the slope to descend. George led, kicking steps into the snow that would support about 1/3 of the foot, and I followed. With each step, the ice axe shaft was plunged into the snow up to its head. With a leash attaching the axe to our packs’ waistbelts, we were completely safe. When the snow became to shallow to drive the shaft of the axe in, we would switch to placing the pick into the snow while supporting our weight on the head of the axe, with the shaft resting on the snow below. This was probably the most enjoyable part of the trip, and gave me insight into how to ascend and descend extremely steep terrain. I never felt the need to have a rope (we weren’t carrying one anyway), and without a rope we were able to move much faster.

After maybe 45 minutes we were at the base of the coulior and avalanche field and entered small trees. This is where the route finding began. We knew that we would eventually meet the trail if we kept going down, as the trail traverses across the slope. However, there were presumably hidden cliff bands that were not visible through the trees. We would end up picking a reasonable looking route, descending as far as possible and then pick our way through cliff bands. We only met one formidable cliff band, but were able to scramble down and reach flat ground. We soon reached the trail. The walk back to the car lasted all of 20-30 minutes, and we completed our journey at about 10:30.

In all, this was an excellent trip (I am waiting for that horrible trip in the mountains, but I think I’ll have to search hard for it). It was great to spend a night out in November, which I assumed was too late in the year. I was especially pleased to capitalize on the skills I have learned from rock climbing by traveling over sketchy terrain, in the mountains, with an overnight pack’s worth of weight on my back. And to top it all off, we were gone from Bellingham for less than 24 hours, leaving plenty of time for a lazy afternoon nap on the couch.
-Sean