Mt. Hood

Mt. Hood has had a grip on my imagination since a climbing disaster there was broadcast on live television in May 2002. A rope team of four climbers who were descending from the summit onto Coalman Glacier lost their footing and began to fall. They hit a three man rope team and then a two man team. The tangle of nine bodies slid into a 50 foot wide, 20 foot deep crevasse called the Bergschrund. Three climbers died despite a massive rescue operation. TV stations had the cameras rolling when an Air Force Reserve helicopter that was trying to airlift one of the victims crashed and rolled down the glacier.

The spectacle of the chopper crash is trivial in comparison to the beauty of the mountain. In the 19th century, surveyors mistakenly thought that Hood, a dormant volcano whose summit is encased in glaciers, was the highest point in the continental U.S. at over 18,000 feet. The actual elevation is 11,239 feet. The surveyors may have been misled by the mountain's dramatic, 8,000 foot rise from the plateau it sits on south of the Columbia River Gorge. The upper part of the mountain is clad with 12 glaciers and snow fields. The snow fields allow for year round skiing.

In September 2004, I made half-assed attempts to reach summit. One day I hiked along the Palmer Ski Lift to an elevation around 7,200 feet and turned around. The next day I hiked to within 1,500 vertical feet of the summit via the Cooper Spur Route. I turned around again because I was solo and I didn't have the gear, skill, knowledge, or experience to attain the summit safely.

In January 2007, Luke, Karl and I hit the slopes at two of Mt. Hood's lift-served ski areas. Luke boarded, Karl and I skied. Luke and I pushed each other beyond our comfort zone by skiing terrain that was intimidating or skiing at intimidating speeds. Near the end, we skied a double black diamond run into Heather Canyon at Mt. Hood Meadows. The surface of the run was diamond-hard ice. We fell much of the way down but sustained no injury. During the trip, I told Luke that we should climb Hood the following summer. He was up for it.

At a gate providing access to Heather Canyon

We decided to make our bid for the summit during the second week of July. I spent a lot of free time in June obsessing about the mountain. The most frequently climbed route ascends the mountain's south face. Another non-technical route follows the Cooper Spur and then climbs a northeastern flank of the mountain. We decided to do the South Side route because it would involve less exposure to steep snow fields and we had little experience as glacier travelers. After Hood, we would try to summit Mt. Adams, a dormant volcano that's about 60 miles north of Hood in Washington state.

I flew out to Portland on a hot Wednesday afternoon. At the time, I was physically addicted to nicotine and avoided cigarettes during the work week by wearing a transdermal nicotine patch. On the weekends I would ditch the patch and suck down a pack of cigarettes or more on a single night. That afternoon was the first time I'd ever gotten on a flight without chain smoking two or three cigarettes before going through security. 

After Luke picked me up at the Portland airport, we had dinner at Sckavone's, where we ordered pints of an India Pale Ale from a tall waitress who Luke had the hots for. As the empty stomach buzz set in, I rubbed the nicotine patch on my shoulder to quell the cravings for a cigarette. Luke and I discussed the South Side route, which I inexpertly drew on a USGS quadrangle map of the mountain's south face. Our waitress asked what we were planning. After hearing our answer, she surprised me by saying that she'd lived in Portland her entire life but didn't know anyone who had summited Hood.

We decided to meet Luke's roommates out for a drink. On the way to the bar, I asked him to stop at a convenience store where I picked up a gleaming pack of Winston Lights. I smoked most of the pack over several pints of beer. On Thursday morning, I woke up hungover and full of self-hatred for having smoked. I slapped on a fresh nicotine patch and ran the tap over the three or four remaining cigarettes.
We got on bikes and rode down to the REI in downtown Portland, where we picked up freeze dried food, an extra nalgene bottle (which I would lose a year later in a couloir on Crestone Peak), and a snow picket. The picket is hammered into the snow and serves an anchor. If a member of your rope team falls into a crevasse, you can clip yourself to the picket with a safety line so that you are secure while you try to haul the fallen teammate out.

During the 55 mile drive from Portland to the mountain, my apprehension about the climb faded. The clear skies and good forecast suggested that the weather would allow us to summit. Around 2:00 p.m., Luke parked his Eurovan at the Timberline Lodge. We signed in at the climber's station and picked up the free, self-issue permits required for travelers in the Mt. Hood Wilderness Area. Then we started the hike.

The South Side route climbs about a vertical mile from the tree line to the summit. It initially runs parallel to the Palmer Ski Lift, then climbs up the Triangle Moraine, winds between Crater Rock and Hell's Kitchen, and finishes with a climb up the Hogsback Ridge of the Coalman Glacier, which sits in the crater rim. On the hike along the Palmer Ski Lift, I carried an 80 pound back pack that contained camping and climbing gear. Hundreds of butterflies flew past us, just a foot or so above the snow. The temperature was in the 80s and I sweated profusely.

When we reached the top of the Palmer Lift around dusk, a snow cat was grooming the slopes. We paused at the top of the lift and drank water. I drank a half full bottle of water that had been left near the unload zone. The operator of the snow cat waved at us.


We hiked up another couple hundred feet to the Triangle Moraine, a field of rock and dirt that Hood's glaciers had dragged down from higher up on the mountain. At an elevation around 9,200 feet, we found a U-shaped rock shelter with an opening facing east. We pitched the tent there. Luke fired up a Mountain Safett Research stove and cooked a freeze dried pasta while it rained lightly. Afterwards, as the sun was setting, I took notes about the climb and gazed down at the foothills thousands of feet below. The scene formed by that rugged terrain and dimming light produced in me a state of aesthetic bliss and a feeling of being deeply attached to life.

Powerful winds shook the tent violently all night, making it impossible to sleep more than ten minutes at a time. We woke up at 3:30 a.m. and resumed the hike. By 5:30 a.m., we reached the base of Crater Rock, a spire that once had formed part of the southern rim of Hood's crater. The Coalman Glacier sits within the crater. The summit ridge is reached by hiking up the Hogsback Ridge, which is the glacier's spine. On either side of the Hogsback, there are fumaroles, vents that have been formed where stinking gases from deep within the mountain melt through the glacier. The Hogsback is intersected by the Bergschrund, a crevasse that is created where the glacier pulls away from Hood's permanent snow and ice pack. We roped up on the Hogsback and began hiking up the ridge.

Half-way up, we made a hard left and traversed west under the summit ridge to a snow wall called the Old Chute, which can be climbed to reach the west end of the summit ridge. Small pieces of snow and rock fell from the summit ridge onto the glacier while we traversed from the Hogsback to the Old Chute. I counted each deliberate movement when we climbed the Old Chute. It could be hard to arrest a fall there because it's close to 45 degrees in grade. A fall would end in the crevasse, rocks, and thermal vents several hundred feet below.

While climbing up the Old Chute, Luke took this stunning photograph of the triangular shadow Hood was casting on the cloud cover below us.

This photo shows me on the Old Chute, just below the summit ridge.

The summit ridge is a knife-edge a hundred yards long and only a few feet wide in places. More than a thousand feet below the ridge to the north lay crevasse-riddled glaciers. To the south was the route we had just traversed. A lightning storm broke out in the southeast as we reached the summit. We didn't tarry on the summit. Although the view was spectacular, the storm and metal devices we were carrying made it a dangerous place. Aside from Luke, me, and two climbers who followed our boot pack, the only living creatures in the crater were two ravens that were squawking in the crags of the crater's western rim.

To the right of me, Mt. Jefferson rises through the clouds.

A minor disaster occurred during the return to our campsite. To descend from Crater Rock back to the Triangle Moraine, we glissaded down the soft snow on the surface of the White River Glacier. When you glissade, you slide down the snow sitting on your rear end. You steer and brake using an ice axe as a rudder. Before the glissade, I failed to zip up the pocket on my camera case where I keep film. The bumpy ride knocked out the roll of film I shot on the summit. It hurt to lose that roll. 

We broke down our camp and hiked back to the Palmer Ski Lift. The slopes were crowded with skiers. An instructor shouted at us to get back on the climbing trail. We disregarded that request and kept on trucking. I felt a mixture of pride, jubilation, and humility. By gaining the summit, we had proved ourselves equal to Mt. Hood's challenge, but we had not conquered the mountain. We had certainly not proven ourselves superior to the mountain. We had achieved a very high aesthetic experience that required effort, strength, and courage. I looked forward to attacking Mt. Adams later that day.

Luke moseys down the middle of a ski run on the way back to the tree line.

July 12-13, 2007