Why didn't any of you tell me that people were BASE-jumping off the north side of Baring (yeah, I know, probably too busy researching those Blue Margarita recipes...)?!?
Inspired by ericd's trip report for Merchant, http://mountaineersforums.org/forums/thread/11719.aspx , C. Pinhead and I headed up to the Barclay Lake TH a couple of weekends ago. Beautiful hot sunny day!
Snow still filled much of the gully. The first waterfall is easily passed on the left (look up toward several downed trees when you are about forty feet short of the falls, then pass above them on obvious tread); the second on climber's right, zig-zagging on rock ledges and then on a ramp through brush and trees; there was a third falls before the turn-off for the tributary gully -- not sure it's a big deal after snow-melt, since I don't recall it distinctly from prior trips, and it can probably be bypassed by scrambling up the rockfall on the left -- but it presented us with some difficulty since the deep snowpack in the gully had moated back from it (or is a cross-moat like that a "schrund"?), leaving us with an overhanging ten-foot hop down onto the rocks under the falls. Not!
Backtracking down the snow found us an easier step down into a side-moat between the snow and the left cliff-wall of the main gully. We used that (at one point sneaking under a "snow cave" arch) to approach the fall, then scrambled the left rockpile along the fall, then worked north -- also along the left cliff/snow moat above the fall -- until we found a convenient spot to step back up onto the snow.
The snow was relatively stiff, and we were glad we had our axes and occasionally sad that we hadn't brought crampons...
There's a prominent gendarme (or at least free-standing rock outcrop) on the right side of the gully above the third waterfall (or pour-off or step or whatever it may be after snow-melt) that signals the "wrong" side-gully, though the outcrop is a little less prominent when half mantled in snow. Just up the main gully from that, you'll see a shadowy recess in the cliff wall above and to your right (the wall that forms the north side of the side-gully) -- an overhang, almost a cave. Work directly up into that -- a nice shaded snack-spot on a hot day -- then turn hard right and up along the base of the cliff, and you're on visible tread in the "correct" side gully (or at least the portion of the side gully that doesn't require you to climb up waterfall slabs).
The only other route issue of note was pointed out by eric -- once up into the upper meadow, crank your head around well to the left: it's the northwest-most high point that's the "true" summit of Merchant (familiar to all Nav students as part of the infamous workshop story problems).
Back to the BASE-jumping: when we were gearing up at 8 a.m. in the parking lot, we encountered a friendly group of young men and women who spoke accented English. They wanted to know if they needed ice axes for Baring. We mentioned our foray of several weeks earlier, when ice axes were definitely desirable (see my report in the scramble section and the follow-up comment about a broken leg on the Mounty trip of the same date)... Of course, conditions might have changed, etc. They didn't have axes or even poles, but looked young and strong, so we didn't play junior Ranger -- they said they'd be careful and turn back if they felt unsafe...
When we got back to the parking lot after summitting Merchant, there the same young folks were again. We asked them if they'd made the summit of Baring and if they'd managed without axes. Somewhat to our surprise, they had summitted. They then mentioned, very deadpan, that they had JUMPED off!
Er, WHAT did you say? At this point, they showed us their little "flying squirrel" BASE jumping suits. They described one of their "receiving" party members being told by a Ranger at the lake (the frickin' LAKE was where they planned to land...!) that it was illegal to jump. The party member tried to radio up, but couldn't make contact, or something. So three of them jumped, successfully, and swam and waded out only to meet the Ranger. The Ranger then called his supervisor, who apparently said there wasn't actually any regulation against it, and so the jumpers made their way back to the TH, where we encountered them. They'd had so much fun they were going to come back the next day (Sunday) and do it again!
The thing that amazed me about all this was that it definitely sounded like this was a well-known BASE-jumping locale.
A little research turned up more info and, unfortunately, a tragedy (the linked article is from July 7, 2004, so obviously it had nothing directly to do with the folks we met in late June 2008):
Fatal fall underscores perils of base-jumping
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2001973650_base07m.html
The article gives this background on Baring BASE-jumping:
"... Mount Baring's potential for base-jumping was discovered nearly 10 years ago by Steve Mulholland, a Seattle resident who died in a 1997 sky-diving accident at the South Pole. It was rediscovered — and popularized — about two years ago by base-jumper Dwain Weston, who died in an October sky-diving accident in Colorado.
"It's now the most popular base-jumping spot in the Puget Sound area ....
"Ron DeHart, a spokesman for the Mount Baker-Snoqualmie National Forest, said base-jumping is so 'infrequent' in the forest that the agency has no formal policy regarding it."
And, apparently, four years later, they still don't. I'm not sure what I think about this -- though it'd be a bit odd for "us" climbers to insist that another "dangerous" muscle- and gravity-powered sport should be banned -- but I do know I'd love to be watching sometime when somebody successfully BASE-jumps from Baring. I just haven't decided whether I'd rather be watching from on top or from below...
And I'm still a little irked to be learning about all this from a non-Mounty source!