Mt Hood. January 13

Peter had news of Mt Hood being a fun climb and descent on Saturday, with wind out of the east helping to nicely fill in the Old Chute and west side of the Hog’s Back. After looking at his photos, I got interested in getting up the volcano that weekend. Due to a few things that were happening and/or going awry, I wasn’t sure if it would happen. I considered cruising up it solo that coming Monday but then things came together and there were three of us talking about heading out the next morning. Our posse would be Peter, Pat, and myself. That’s how climbing trips tend to happen. All it takes is some photos, a hinting in the interest of climbing, a few “yeah, yeah that sounds good,” and next thing you know, you have a trip.

In the morning, Peter announced that he would not be joining us for the climb. Which I could understand being that 1. climbing Hood twice in a weekend sounds like a masochist’s workout plan, 2. life management has to happen at some point.

Pat had a broken Dynafit binding on his touring set up. With that out of commission, Pat would be boot packing instead of touring. The best option for the morning would be to wait for lifts to start turning at Timberline, take the Magic Mile Chair, and then start at the base of the Palmer. With exchange passes we didn’t have to buy tickets, which wouldn’t have happened since I am cheap. Pat asked about the box cat, “is it running today?”
“Yes, from 11-2,” the desk worker told us.
“Alright, great!” He wanted to take the box cat up to the top of the Palmer, cutting out more low angle, crummy walking.
“Hey, it is 9:30. A cat ride sounds nice but we’d have to wait for over an hour,” and with that comment we decided to ignore the box cat and cruise up on foot.

After an hour of uphill, we were at the top of the Palmer eating sandwiches and, naturally, along came the box cat full of people. Pat gave me a look of "told ya we should have ridden the box cat." We continued on up for about a 100 meters before the ground turned to slick bubble ice. I switched from my split to crampons at this point and we were both on foot, sliding devices nicely strapped to our packs, cruising on upward.

I've been told that Mt Hood draws a funny crowd, and the South Side is more of a route that climbers feel comfortable on. With the good weather, many people were out and about. Between Illumination Rock and the top, each climber who saw us commented in disbelief that we even considered riding down the mountain. "Where, exactly, do you plan on riding those things," we were asked? We responded with the West Crater and continued to blow minds. Really, I didn't find it that odd of a task and neither did Pat so we cruised along.

It wasn't until we were on the last steep uphill through the Old Chute that we encountered two dudes who had a more epic day than we were about to have. They ascended the Sandy Glacier Headwall, which can get rowdy and has sent many a climbing group to their ruin. Upon seeing our gear the one guy exclaimed, "hell yeah, you're about to have a great time!"

Off the top, he was totally accurate. The snow was deep, wind deposited and good. Once we traversed into the WCR things headed south. I ended up riding the remainder of the mountain with my ice axe due to firm conditions. We'd find good pockets of chalky, smooth ice covered snow, but the rest was super firm ice, frozen sastrugi, and bubble ice.

Overall, the day was sweet. It is always fun to be in the mountains and despite the less than ideal conditions, we didn't have to walk a step downhill. Time from car to car: 6 hours including two lunch breaks and a top out tea party. Sadly I couldn't perform a summit handstand due to high wind. Next time.