Mt Hood Climbing - June 2007

Greg and I climbed Mt Hood with a friend and past co-worker Warren.

When I was younger, I lived near Mt Hood and did most of my early skiing on the mountain. I have always wanted to climb it. We took advantage of a family reunion in Vancouver Washington to accomplish the deed.

The distance from Timerline Lodge to the summit is roughly 3.6 miles and 5300 vertical feet.

We drove up to Timberline Lodge on a Sunday afternoon in a rain and snow storm. The weather was crap and we were worried that we would have to bag the climb. My dad brought his RV to the parking lot which served as base-camp. The first alarm was at 3am - sleet was beating on the side of the RV, we went back to sleep. Second alarm at 4am - weather was still crap. Third alarm at 5am - still foggy and various forms of precipitation so we decided to call off the climb. Warren decided to drive back down the mountain to Gresham and go to work - while warming up his truck, he saw a sign of clearing and came back in the RV to have us take a look. Knowing that we would be kicking ourselves if the weather actually cleared and we hadn't made an attempt, we decided to get started and watch the weather - we'd turn back if it didn't clear up by the time we got to the top of the lift chairs. The weather did indeed clear! Here is the view from above the lift chairs looking back to the lodge (still in the light clouds).

During the summer on weekends, Timberline Lodge runs snowcats for climbers. They give you a ride from the lodge to the top of the resort for a fee (never figured out the cost, no doubt very pricey - but we'd have paid!). Unfortunately it does not run on week days which is when we needed to be there (probably a better time to climb anyway as the mountain was not lonely but was not the ant-hill of people I half expected due to the multitude of people who summit the mountain each year). So we added roughly 2500 feet to the climb by hiking up from the lodge to the top of the Palmer lift. In a demoralizing turn of events, the early morning skiers were getting off the lift chairs just as we were reaching the top of the lift. We could have skipped the alarms at 3,4,5am, slept until 7:30 and been in the same place! Grr. Then again, we can scoff at those who take the cat or the lift chair... In case anyone might read this as climbing advise, the 3am departure would have been necessary on a more typical day. Give our crappy weather of the night, the snow had frozen solid and did not soften until later in the day than would be typical.

Here is the view roughly 1000 ft above the top of palmer. The snow-ridge just to the left of center in this picture is the "hog-back". The summit is just behind the tallest point in this picture.


Here's another shot of a climber on the hog-back ( this was actually a shot on the descent so the lighting has changed appreciably). To the right of the hog-back is the "pearly gates". The route goes to the right below the crevasse, then up to the left of the buttress. This is the standard route up Mt Hood and is typically snow filled at this time of year. However, the snow had melted out and there was an ice-fall - it was roughly 15 feet, no 25, no 50 feet at least. We did tie-off and setup a belay through this section.
After the pearly gates, it was a short stretch to the summit. The day had cleared nearly perfectly - we were able to see Adams and Rainier to the north, and Jefferson and the three sisters to the south. Here is a picture looking north - see the burly glaciers in the fore-ground.And here is the view to the south:

Here is a summit photo of two great people we met on top (Sabrina and Chad from CA). I took the picture so that's my involvement - haven't gotten pictures of us on top from Warren yet.We descended a different route down a steep snow slope. The short ridge walk to the snow field made for great photos. Here are Greg, Warren and I on the ridge:

And here is Greg looking for the perfect glisade:
Here's the view down (see the climber below us on the hog-back):

One very interesting part of the climb is that Mt Hood is quite an active volcanoe. We passed a number of fumeroles on the mountain. This is one viewed from the hog back. What looks like a smudge on the camera lense is actually sulfurous gases. Yes - it smelled bad.The ascent took roughly 5 hours with the descent taking 2 hours (not a great glisade mountain but there were some fun sections). Here is the view from the parking lot:

The mountain did not feel technical on this route (except the short ice-fall stretch). In good conditions, I would feel comfortable solo. However, given the frequent climbing tragedies on this mountain that make the news every year, it is not a mountain to be taken for granted - especially when it comes to the unpredicability of the weather in the pacific northwest.

For anyone who has read previous blogs, you will remember the unfortunate drowning incident involving my camera. While it has recently been replaced, I did not have a camera on Mt Hood so these pictures are courtesy of Chad and Sabrina. Thank you both very much for sharing your excellent photos!