Baker Snow Caves - Day 1
What a day! Troop 466 left home at the crack of dark (4:30 AM) and drove up to Mt. Baker for our annual snow caving trip. The day was wonderful and the site we picked looked like a scene from Ice Planet Hoth.
OK, well it wasn’t this exciting, but pretty darn close. We settled on our usual spot at the base of Artist’s Point. Its quite hard to describe how incredible the view is from our site, but hopefully the pictures will do it justice. The weather couldn’t be beat and we were once again blessed with the Luna-bubble of great weather for our camping.
The troop went straight to work on creating the caves, opting for the “uber-cave” once again for our group of 15 people. In true survival fashion, we practiced digging the caves teams on each of the entrances alternating digging and clearing every 4-5 minutes.
Our multiple years of snow caving experience has paid off and we were able to dig the 15 person cave in less than two hours. Amazing teamwork allowed us to complete work and
We all broke for lunch and enjoyed the spring sunshine on the mountain, doing a bit of “potluck” with our lunch items, sharing stories and savoring the time we saved digging the caves.
Shortly after lunch the Mt. Baker Ski Patrol came up and informed us that the group at the base of bowl had an injured person from a backcountry skiing outing and that they needed assistance getting the person and their gear to the lodge. It turned out that the person had severely injured their knee, so the scouts went down with the Ski Patrol reps and assisted getting the person out of the forest area and to safety.
With our good turn for the day behind us, we hiked the rest of the group to the Mt. Baker lodge to enjoy some of the wonderful backcountry views and some well deserved fries and sodas.
For now, we’re settling down and figuring out how to spend the rest of the time we were able to spend. Stay tuned for more updates!