The Mountain

Yes, I did leave Fiona and the wee ones to go off galavanting around the world... well not really, but Fiona sure thinks so.

Thirteen years ago I climbed Mt. Hood and it was a blast, somewhere along the way I forgot about the experience until recent climbing accidents on the mountain brought back memories of my climb. Mt. Hood is not a huge mountain by any means (Fiona aptly observed that it "is smaller than Everest"), but it has its exciting challenges. Such as sharing a small non-ventilated mountaineering tent with your gassy cousin... So anyways I decided to use some of my frequent flyer miles and go climb the mountain again with my cousin Ben. I like picture books, so here are the pictures:


The adventure begins at Timberline Ski lodge which is open well into the summer months and entertains the U.S. Ski team for training during the summer...






We prepared for extreme cold, instead it was uncomfortably warm for the first 1000 ft of elevation.





After the first 2500 vertical feet we traded packs because after some discussion we realized a lack of division of labor... basically Ben had his sleeping bag and I had everything else... the 15 pound tent, cookware, stove, fuel... oh yeah he also had the matches. At any rate he kept complaining that I was taking too many breaks until we switched packs.




We planned on climbing to the top of Triangle Moraine and making camp, but only made it to 9200 vertical feet before it started to get dark.




The high altitude allows for some stunning views, though the lack of trees and high volume of climbers also allow for some not so stunning views (beware the yellow snow).





We started climbing again the next morning at 545am, and arrived at the Hogs Back (about 10,600 vertical feet) at about 7am which is the last leg before the Pearly Gates and then the summit. At the top of the trail to the right there are two chutes, one going to the left and one to the right, both are called the Pearly Gates. The right was too dangerous to climb, so everyone was using the left which is very skinny and had a big chunk of water ice in the middle making it very dangerous.








We summited the mountain at about 900am on May 12, Mt. St Helens is behind us on the left and Mt. Adams on the right. Both of which are in Washington state.



We then began the descent back into the chute through the Pearly Gates, but there was a large line of people on the other side waiting to come up and we didn't feel like waiting on the precarious ice for our turn to climb down.








So we resummited and climbed down the Old Chute, the line to the left of my back pack is the Hogs Back.





We then had to traverse back over to the Hogs Back under this crumbling wall of ice. I got hit in the shoulder by a falling chunk of ice as we traversed.




We then made our long descent back to the cars, hopefully it won't be 13 years before I climb it again. ~Zachariah