Oregon's Mount Hood, showed itself from a truly amazing side the last 2 days.It's not the highest volcano in the range and you can in fact see Mt Rainier from it which towers over an additional 3000ft. Nevertheless it's a very nice climb early in the season before too much ice and snow starts melting making conditions hazardous.
The route went nicely smooth up about 2000 ft up to the Hogsback, we were among the first people on the mountain that night. On the Hogsback one of the group climbers had to call it quits unfortunately, me and Andy set of a bit earlier with one of the guides to make it back to the last climber as soon as possible for starting the descent. the last 800 ft got gradually more steep, and roping up and using ice axes became necessary, and eventually climbing on all for for a shorter stretch, with about 40 or so percent inclination. once up though the old chute there is only a few hundred yards to the actual summit where the sun was starting to rise. The "captain morgan" look came to good use on the wind free summit. Which was reached about 4.50am.
Quickly more and more light started shining, in the picture below taken just before we started the decent one can see the Columbia river snaking along to the north east.
The picture below was taken just before descending as the first team down the old chute for the day, the people can be seen collecting on the summit watching the sunrise. I never really had any problem with the altitude which I've had a couple of times previously, but this was one very enjoyable hike.
Going down one could see the lemming train of people slowly ascending the mountain. Here is any posing who was leading us down as the bottom=most guy of the rope. The Hogsback can be seen as stretching diagonally upwards towards the right corner having a lot of people sitting along it.
Close to the hogsback one can find a couple of evidences that it is a volcano one is climbing on. In fact already after 10-20 minutes of climbing the familiar sulfur stench similar to the HS of rotten eggs started smelling, and the picture below show one of the vents where this type of gas emminates from.
Having the sun behind the mountain for a short while showed the truly remarkable silhouette of Mt Hood as it cast it shadow initial almost all the way to the pacific. In the Photo below it had started retreating and become more well-defined.
A couple of the guides posing close to the top of the ski lifts where we started, unfortunately on the way down that only meant about halfway down. A good motivator for finishing the last stretch though was that we had been making good time and were there at 7.20 already and that meant we could enjoy the Lodge's breakfast buffet if nothing unexpected happened.
the final stretch doing down to the lodge can be seen below. We followed the snowcat's tracks which is what most of those ascending from the lodge had done on the way up also. A majority of the group had brought snowboards and skied down once we reached the top of the ski run.
Finally down at 8.30am (7h total hiking time), and could freshen up some, return renal boots and gear and then chat with the others in the group before having a very nice "Breakfast Buffet", We had been up close to 10h already so the concept of breakfast was not entirely straight forward. But nonetheless amazingly satisfying...
Stats:
State: Oregon
High point: Mount Hood
Elevation: 11 239 ft (3425.6 m)
Date: May 5th, 2012
Total elevation to date: 202 968 ft (61 865 m)
Access: ice/snow hike, snowcat
Difficulty rating (of 10): 4
Potential Difficulties: Too warm (falling ice, slushy snow), too cold (ice blankets which are near impossible to climb), inclement weather, sharp tools...
I had signed up for a summit program with Timberline Mountain guides, in total we were 9 guys of varying background and spread across the country. there were also 2 guides for the first day but 3 for the actual climb. The first day involved briefing and a couple of hours of snow-climbing school, including self-arrests, crampon techniques and roped travel. a lot of fun and a very toasty day felling like 70's in the sun.
The video shows Mt Hood from approximately the Timberline Lodge (~ 6000 ft - 1800 m). quite a part of the main trail going up the mountain can be seen. For a more detailed description of part of our route the picture below shows that in red.
The "day" started at 1230am with assembly and by 1am we had left in a snowcat carrying us up to the top of the ski lifts. We hiked a short stretch to get our warmth back, truth be told though the temperature was quite agreeable, it had been colder last morning, but the bottom temperatures was supposed to come along at 5-6 in the morning. Layering worked fine, and although I feared wind making it worse and thus directly started with my hard shell jacket on, that was not an issue during any of the climb. Like I mentioned above we were truly blessed with weather. There wasn't much one could make out in the darkness until the moon had risen high enough to shed some light on the mountain side.
The route went nicely smooth up about 2000 ft up to the Hogsback, we were among the first people on the mountain that night. On the Hogsback one of the group climbers had to call it quits unfortunately, me and Andy set of a bit earlier with one of the guides to make it back to the last climber as soon as possible for starting the descent. the last 800 ft got gradually more steep, and roping up and using ice axes became necessary, and eventually climbing on all for for a shorter stretch, with about 40 or so percent inclination. once up though the old chute there is only a few hundred yards to the actual summit where the sun was starting to rise. The "captain morgan" look came to good use on the wind free summit. Which was reached about 4.50am.
Quickly more and more light started shining, in the picture below taken just before we started the decent one can see the Columbia river snaking along to the north east.
The picture below was taken just before descending as the first team down the old chute for the day, the people can be seen collecting on the summit watching the sunrise. I never really had any problem with the altitude which I've had a couple of times previously, but this was one very enjoyable hike.
Going down one could see the lemming train of people slowly ascending the mountain. Here is any posing who was leading us down as the bottom=most guy of the rope. The Hogsback can be seen as stretching diagonally upwards towards the right corner having a lot of people sitting along it.
Close to the hogsback one can find a couple of evidences that it is a volcano one is climbing on. In fact already after 10-20 minutes of climbing the familiar sulfur stench similar to the HS of rotten eggs started smelling, and the picture below show one of the vents where this type of gas emminates from.
Having the sun behind the mountain for a short while showed the truly remarkable silhouette of Mt Hood as it cast it shadow initial almost all the way to the pacific. In the Photo below it had started retreating and become more well-defined.
A couple of the guides posing close to the top of the ski lifts where we started, unfortunately on the way down that only meant about halfway down. A good motivator for finishing the last stretch though was that we had been making good time and were there at 7.20 already and that meant we could enjoy the Lodge's breakfast buffet if nothing unexpected happened.
the final stretch doing down to the lodge can be seen below. We followed the snowcat's tracks which is what most of those ascending from the lodge had done on the way up also. A majority of the group had brought snowboards and skied down once we reached the top of the ski run.
Finally down at 8.30am (7h total hiking time), and could freshen up some, return renal boots and gear and then chat with the others in the group before having a very nice "Breakfast Buffet", We had been up close to 10h already so the concept of breakfast was not entirely straight forward. But nonetheless amazingly satisfying...
Stats:
State: Oregon
High point: Mount Hood
Elevation: 11 239 ft (3425.6 m)
Date: May 5th, 2012
Total elevation to date: 202 968 ft (61 865 m)
Access: ice/snow hike, snowcat
Difficulty rating (of 10): 4
Potential Difficulties: Too warm (falling ice, slushy snow), too cold (ice blankets which are near impossible to climb), inclement weather, sharp tools...
