Without Limits: Chris Baker’s passion for hiking spreads

by Nancy Haggerty, Poughkeepsie Journal, link to original post

Five feet, 11 inches, 255 pounds.
Five feet, 11 inches, 150 pounds.
Two different people?
No. Well, not exactly.

Chris Baker comes from an outdoorsy family but spent his 15- to 25-year-old years “not doing anything but eating.” Now, when not at his Laerdal Medical sales job, he’s thinking and reading about hiking and climbing, organizing hikes and climbs, or hiking and climbing himself.

His boss respects his passion so much that Baker has the OK to take six months off to climb Mount Everest. With its $65,000 price tag, that may be years away. But as it is, the 29-year-old Highland resident has plenty going on.

Baker founded the Hudson Valley Hikers, a meetup group, the day after hiking Hunter in December 2008 with a now-defunct Albany-based hiking group he had found on the Internet.

What started as a group of one — Baker was the only hiker at his club’s first two hikes — has exploded to about 2,200. The club has made 390 hikes. Baker has done 297 and credits most of his weight loss (that 42-inch waist is now 30) to hiking.

Baker — who just finished hiking the 35, 3,500-foot-plus Catskill peaks — describes his club as mixed. Some folks, often parents with kids, seek moderate exercise. At least once a month, 3-to-4-mile hikes are held, sometimes in bird sanctuaries. There’s also family camping. But there are also people like Baker, eager for tough challenges.

Among Baker’s undertakings is his attempted summit last May of 14,411-foot Mount Rainier. That ended at 11,000-foot Camp Muir when 1 to 3 inches of forecasted snow ballooned to 32 inches, triggering avalanches (He will try summitting Rainier again this June).

Descending dejected, other club members decided to climb 8,365-foot Mount St. Helen’s. But Baker went to 11,249-foot Mount Hood.

While girlfriend and fellow climber Rachel Shields stayed below, he started solo hiking at 6:45 a.m. with crampons, trekking poles, a helmet and one ice ax. Since an untethered misstep can mean a 3,000-foot fall, others were roped together (as Baker’s group was on Rainier).

Tethering on Hood usually means a 16-and-a-half-hour climb. Baker got up and down in four. “I was flying by roped teams who started at 3 a.m.,” said Baker, who summitted in 2 hours, 15 minutes.

Descending, he used the ax as an anchor, climbing backward. Then he slid sitting for 1,000 feet — as “ice boulders,” loosened by warming temperatures, battered him — then ran the last 4 miles in crampons.

Baker admits there’s a “fine line” between envelope pushing and foolishness, but he believes in his preparation. “You can pay $5,000 for a guy to tell you when to eat and sleep. I’m more into researching it,” he explained.

Curiously, perhaps his worst experience was in January, when he and three friends summitted 19,341-foot Mount Kilimanjaro, where assistance is mandated.

Suffering from abdominal and chest pains while descending, Baker passed out at 18,000 feet. Whatever the cause, Baker’s stomach pains continued every 90 seconds for two weeks. But that hasn’t turned him off to international hiking.

After Alaska’s Denali next year, Baker wants to hike the world’s tallest peaks. Switzerland is on his radar, as is Russia, where he would stay in huts converted from giant oil barrels.

To hike Antarctica’s highest point, he’ll be dropped on an iceberg by seaplane and pay the pilot to, several weeks later, return day after day until finding him at a rendezvous point.

This is the same man who in December 2008 climbed Breakneck Ridge outside Cold Spring and concluded he’d never hike anything harder. Without hiking, he speculates he’d be eating pizza and Chinese food nightly, and watching TV. “(Losing weight through hiking) motivated me to push harder, go farther,” Baker said.

Now, he’s doing things like January’s solo attempt at a non-stop, 64-and-a-half-mile, 32,000-foot-elevation-gain hike of New Hampshire’s White Mountains in whiteout conditions. Feeling hypothermic, he stopped after 47 miles and 28 hours but will try again this September.

“It is about the challenge much more than the exercise for me,” Baker said. “I like pushing my body to the limits. But I only do that on occasion, maybe once a month. The other hikes are about slowing it down, learning what I can about the areas and trails, and taking in the sights.”

And there will be plenty of sights to come. Considering his packed calendar, Baker said, “I could probably not need to plan another hike until 2020.”

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