With the arrival of our second child imminently approaching, I finally got a day off work and a day pass from my wife. The weather forecast was pretty marginal for Washington, and recent warm temps caused all local ice to fall down. So at Gilbert's suggestion, we threw together plans last-minute to head down to Mt. Hood. Since not much has been climbed lately on any large scale, we decided to keep it simple, and since we wanted to ski, we settled on the South Side route.
The route is super straight-forward, but any volcano in mid-Winter can get pretty interesting. Surprisingly, the riff-raff didn't seem to realize this. There was quite a crowd for January, and plenty of folks in way over their heads. Some wisely turned around, others pressed on.
We left Seattle Friday night, and arrived in the Timberline parking lot around midnight. We decided upon a 4am wakeup, and hit the hay for a quick nap. Morning came with clear skies, a near full moon, and stiff biting winds. We were sorta slow gearing up, and were moving by around 5:30. We hit the cat track and put about 1,000 ft behind us. We stopped to regroup at the hut to assess the situation. The winds were the big question. Consistent and frequent gusts upwards of 30-40mph were beating us down a bit. We decided to push on, since worst case scenario we would just ski down the Palmer back to the cars and have breakfast. By the time the sun came up, conditions were improving, and the gusts were getting less frequent.
Sunrise and the Central Oregon volcanoes - Jefferson and the Sisters
Me skinning up the Palmer Glacier
A nearly full moon, from near the top of the Palmer chairlift
Once we got above the groomed cattrack, conditions for skinning worsened drastically. A thick coating of huge rime chunks ranging from 2" and up made upward progress very unpleasant and nearly impossible. After battling it out for 500' with no signs of improvement anywhere, we ditched skis behind a large ice boulder and switched to crampons. It was a wise choice.
Gilbert cramponing up in perfect weather
Matt Jillson
Me nearing the Hogsback
Once we reached the Hogsback, we took a break to regroup. We had seen one party of three reach the top, and they were on their way back down the "old chute". The next few parties after them went up the Hogsback, then turned around. They were obviously very inexperienced climbers, judging by their gear and the travel. They said they had seen a crack and had heard running water, and decided that it was too dangerous for them. It had taken us quite a bit more time than we'd hoped to reach this point. It was about noon. The summit party returned to the Hogsback, and they described heading up through the Pearly Gates which they found extremely narrow and icy. That would've been great if we hadn't been a bit worried about time. They thought the old chute was much easier, and we decided to make a go that way.
A fumarole from the Hogsback
A solo climber heads up the Hogsback
The old chute with perfect neve for front-pointing, about 40-45 degrees
I set out first. Upon dropping left off the Hogsback, there was some wind slab in the depression, but no evidence of any bergschrund, and certainly no running water. I gunned it for the summit, and reached it about 30 minutes later. Gilbert and Matt made it about 10 minutes later. Conditions on the summit were perfect with almost no wind, and visibility as far North as Mt. Rainier.
Summit ridge
Me on the summit, 11,235 ft
Me and Jillson resting on the summit
Which one's goofier?
To descend we downclimbed the old chute. By this time a few skiers had arrived, having booted all the way up with skis. A couple guys skied the old chute, which didn't look fun at all and was quite icy. Others booted back down face-in. We downclimbed the whole way back to the Hogsback, facing in 90% of the way.
Jillson downclimbing the Hogsback
We cramponed the rest of the way down to our skis. Matt decided to ski the 500' of horrible icy rime, while Gilbert and I carried our skis back down to the top of the chairlift. It took about the same time either way. We then had a thoroughly enjoyable ski down 2500' of groomers back to the Timberline lodge, arriving back to the car around 4pm. We finished off the day with the discovery of an eatery that I'll definitely go back to anytime it's feasible - the Skyline Pub. We had awesome BBQ food that would've kicked ass even if we hadn't just burned thousands of calories.
Next time I hit Hood hopefully it'll be Leuthold's Couloir or some ice route, but this was still an awesome January trip.
Full photos here: http://picasaweb.google.com/joshuadhawkins77/MtHoodSouthSide#
