Climbing the Volcano.

Mount Baker 10,778', in the North Cascades, is the most shoreward mountain in the cascade range. Because of that it gets the most snowfall and holds the record for the highest annual snowfall (95 feet) of any mountain in the contiguous US. Another interesting fact is that Mount Baker is the second most active volcano and the most heavily crevassed mountain in the contiguous US.

This is an interesting mountain and this past weekend I led a small, but dedicated, team to the summit.

Originally I had planned on driving up to the trailhead and meeting my 2 climbing partners on Thursday evening, sleeping in the vehicle, and then hitting the trail around 7AM. Busy schedule and unanticipated commitments caused me to have to leave out on Friday morning. This meant that I had to get out of bed at 3:30AM to get ready and drive up to the trailhead for our meet. I did a good job of getting things ready the night before and made my schedules, meeting my team at roughly 6:30AM.

The trailhead elevation is at about 3,100', the hike in was relatively uneventful and the trail was quite easy. We even had a couple of beautiful waterfalls to distract us from the effort of carrying our over loaded backpacks up the hill.

The crossing of Kulshan Creek was a little tricky but it looked worse than it actually was and we barely got our feet wet.

We worked our way up and onto the glacier, finding a nice camping area at the Black Buttes. Camping was on the glacier at an elevation of approximately 7,200' with wonderful weather and good visibility of the route to the summit.

Some cloudiness did come in overnight but the temps were quite mild and the clouds were high so I wasn't worried about conditions being poor for our summit attempt. As is the tradition, we arose at around 2:00AM to prepare for an early start for the summit. This is generally done in order to do most of your climb under favorable cold conditions while the snow is much more solid. I really think this was unnecessary on this climb because of the warm conditions even at this early hour. Besides, this is what a climbing camp looks like at 2:00AM:

We left our glacier camp at around 3:00AM. As the weather had been quite nice for the past week and many climbers had summitted over the preceding days, the route up the glacier was quite easy to follow. The glacier was in prime condition with the crevasses all well covered and having very solid snow bridges. The lower portion of the glacier has a fairly low angle slope and the early evidence of the sun made for a spectacular horizon.

There is a steep step of about 100' to gain the Pumice Ridge which is snow covered. The climbers that I was leading to the summit did a great job of not complaining and holding a nice steady pace up and onto the ridge.

From the ridge you work your way up and onto the Roman Wall, the steepest portion of the climb. The snow conditions were poor, to say the least, with knee deep postholing on the way up the Wall. As hard as this was for travel, it was probably good for my inexperienced climbers because it feels much more secure than icy conditions through this very steep portion of the climb.

We made our way up over the top of the Roman Wall where the slope becomes less steep and less of an effort.

And a little above this you reach the broad summit plateau. A short hike across the Plateau brings you to a summit cone. We reached the top of the Summit Cone 10,778', at around 7:30AM, not bad considering the experience of the couple I was leading. We met up with another group up there and spent a few minutes talking, getting some pics;

and then promptly headed down. What you can't gather from this summit photo was that the wind was blowing at around 35 knots and freezing sleet started moments after the shot.

The trip down the mountain was quite uneventful other than even worse conditions on the Roman Wall where, if you got off the packed snow, you would sink to your crotch. We were able to get off the wall, down the ridge, and off the step without incident though and made it back to our camp right at noon. We broke camp, loading all of our stuff in our packs, and headed down the trail, making it out to our vehicles by 3:00PM.

Overall, this was a great climb and I considered it a huge success simply because the couple I was guiding thoroughly enjoyed themselves and didn't seem to have any moments where they were wishing they weren't on the mountain. Best of all, Bruce had a nice cold Mike's Hard Lemonade for me at the truck!

Great climb and a great time with some great friends!

Cheers!

Cap'n Ron

Some S'plainin' To Do

This whole motorcycle swapping, buying, selling, trading, acquiring.... thing has really started to make my head spin. I think it's time to try to get things typed up and documented so I don't get confused and ride the wrong motorcycle home from the next gathering.

OK

Two main bikes at this moment are the:

2009 R1200RT

And the F800GS

And both of these are excellent motorcycles, but.....

Let's start with the R1200RT -

The R1200RT is arguably the best sport touring motorcycle on the market. It is absolutely amazing as a 2-up touring motorcycle that still has plenty of performance. This baby has heated seats, heated grips, electronic cruise control, electronic suspension adjustments, adjustable windscreen, traction control, and the list goes on. It cruises beautifully at 80mph and, with the windscreen raised, is almost as quiet as riding in the cage. To ride this gal in the rain is something one has to do to understand the environmental protection this bike provides. Amazing!

But..... it just doesn't light my fire. It's great 2-up but it's doesn't fit my riding style when I'm alone. And I'm alone a lot. I have always been the kind of guy who likes to look on a map and pick the tiniest squiggly line on it and head for it. Therein lies the problem. Lots of those little squiggly lines turn out to be dirt roads, and sometimes really rough dirt roads. The RT isn't really an appropriate bike for that kind of riding.

Next up, the F800GS

The F800GS is another amazing bike but completely on the other end of the spectrum from the R1200RT. This has been a fun bike, to say the least. This is the kind of place this bike feels most at home.

This bike will take you places that just beg for adventure! I originally purchased this for my solo touring bike to complement the R1200RT. Didn't work.

The F800GS excels in the dirt road environment but not so much when you are on the big freeway slab. It has gotten better and I think it could be made even better with the addition of a larger windscreen. I do really like this bike and would keep it under different conditions.... still might.

Bikes recently purged (last 6mos):

Buell 1125R - Sport bike extraordinair

BMW G650 X-Challenge - hard core dirt bike

Now try to keep up here, this is where things begin to get complicated.

Casey bought my X-Challenge to compliment his R1200GS Adventure (the same one that I totaled in a confrontation with a guardrail) and for more serious dirt riding. Well, the X-Challenge didn't work out to his liking and some of his priorities got changed up for him so he started really lusting for his dream bike, the BMW HP2 Super Enduro.

About this same time BMW introduced the 30th Anniversary Edition of the R1200GS Adventure. The 2008 GS Adventure is what I traded for the RT and have regretted it ever since.

I had been half-heartedly attempting to find someone to trade my RT for a GS adventure for several months without any luck so I had been thinking selling the RT outright and just purchasing a USED GS Adventure. BMW did introduce a new motor for the GS this year and it really is "all that" so I was beginning to wonder if maybe I could rationalize the 2010 model somehow and then..... BMW introduced that damn 30th Anniversary Edition.

Casey put the X-Challenge up for sell and began looking in ernest for an HP2. He didn't have much luck selling the X-Challenge but he did find his HP2, set up perfectly, and close by.

He makes himself a deal on this HP2, picks it up and brings it home, and promptly finds a guy that wants to trade a wrecked HP2 for the X-Challenge. Hmmmm...... the X-Challenge cost me $5K as a brand new 07, the HP2 was selling at $20K in 2006. Damage looked pretty minor so, what the heck, let's make this trade deal.

Yeah, the beak is a little busted up, the head guards are a little scraped, and the handlebars are a bit buggered, but nothing a little elbow grease and a little BMW cash can't fix! :-)

Same time all of this is going on I'm down talking to the fine salesmen at Ride West BMW about this new 2010 Anniversary GS Adventure. Yeah, we're talking about how there are only supposed to around 38 of these guys coming to the states with each dealer only allocated one. I'm telling him how lucky I am that I couldn't get one even if I wanted because, surely the one they had coming in was already spoken for. "Oh no" Mr. salesman says, "we just got the word that ours is on the way so, no one has had a chance to put their name on it yet." Damn, these BMW guys are tricky!

OK, I give Mr. salesman $500 to hold the bike for me so I can get a gander at it before giving it up to someone else. About 2 weeks later I go down to look this new bike in the eye and see if she's for me. Wow, she was pretty!

But, it didn't have a couple of safety options I was looking for so, as hard as it was, I turned my back on her. I look to the salesman and say "as much as I am enamored by her looks, she is lacking some key features, sorry." He says that isn't a problem, he has several other interested buyers and my $500 deposit will be refunded. So how about a non-Anniversary model? Well, that could work if we can find one set up the way I want. We get on his computer and start doing some searching. Nothing in his inventory. Hmmmm..... nothing in the western US. Oh well, just wasn't meant to be. I'll wait for the 2011's coming this fall. "But wait!" says Mr. salesman. "I think someone said we had made a trade deal with another dealer to allow us another Anniversary model". Cool, let's see what it's equipped with. Darn, still missing my key safety features. "But wait!" "It hasn't gone into production yet so WE can add whatever options we want." Oh, really!? "Let's get these changes made and get 'er ordered up!"

Born on my lovely wife's birthday:

And scheduled to arrive at the dealer during the first week of August and it has all of the options that I wanted. :-)

This is the motorcycle that I wanted to replace the RT with so the RT goes up for sale in ernest. The dealer has offered me a really good trade deal (might be because of all the money they have already made off of me over the years) so if it doesn't sell I'll just trade her in when the new GS comes in. I do have a very interested party from down in So Cal that is scheming on coming up to pick up the RT though, but I don't consider it sold until I have the money in my hands.

Now the new dilemma, the F800GS. The HP2 is a far superior off-road bike to the 800 and will probably be superior on-road too. I'm thinking the 800 will have to go. I will wait until the HP2 is fully repaired before making the decision but, my guess is that it will end up being a rarely ridden bike and it is just too fine a machine to relegate to garage art duty.

So, this is where we stand..... I think.

R1200RT - To be sold, gone.

F800GS - To be sold, gone (maybe)

R1200GS Adventure 30th Anniversary Edition - coming to a garage near you soon.

R1200 HP2 Super Enduro - Broken but fixable, hopefully in my garage within a week.

I still have some time to let all of this shake out and, who knows? I may end up turning down the GS Adventure (I still can), keeping the RT and 800, and fixing up the HP2 and selling it...... Yeah - right!!!! hahaha!

Cheers all!