Mount Hood

The end of June we headed up to Oregon for a week long reunion with my side of the family. We made arrangements to have my parents meet us in Hood River to pick up the kids so that we could climb Mt. Hood before heading down to their place. Mt. Hood is a snow/ice climb so we headed up to Alta a few weeks before to practice our snow protection and using our ice axes to self-arrest in the event of a fall. Notice the incredible amount of snow still on the mountain in late June!

After dropping off the kids we headed up to Timberline ski resort to eat dinner at the historic lodge and then laid down to sleep in the back of the Sequoia by about 8pm. We woke up in time to gear up and start up the mountain at 2am. The first few hours were spent hiking a trail the paralleled the ski runs. Once we reached the top of the resort it was time to get our crampons on.  It was freezing cold once we stopped hiking so we could gear up.  My teeth were chattering in the picture below.

We reached the Devil's Kitchen and the start of the technical part of the climb just as the sun was coming up. 

As there were massive amounts of people on the mountain that morning we opted not to take the most popular route and instead headed straight up to and around the bergshrund (large crevasse) and up the Pearly Gates route. 

Coming around the crevasse, you can see all the way to the base of the resort

The Pearly Gates

The route we climbed

 

We summited about 7:30am with a beautiful 360 degree view. We could see Mt. Saint Helens, Rainer, and Adams to the north and Mt. Jefferson and the three Sisters to the south. 

 

We fought the crowds heading down the Mazama chute and then glissaded much of the way down once we hit the resort runs. Jim got going so fast riding his avalanche shovel down the hill that he even burned a hole in his pants. Red is the ascent route and green is the descent including right over the jumps in the terrain park. 

 

We grabbed some lunch at Calamity Jane's in Sandy, OR (where they had a divine berry cobbler) and then headed to Portland to wait for my brother's flight to land that night.  We went to a local disc golf park to kill some time and catch a nap in the car.  While sitting out next to the car this raccoon run right by us.