Mount Hood Part Deux

James and I will be attempting to climb the South Side/Old Chute route on Mount Hood again this Friday night/Saturday morning.

Then, Sunday, Justin and I are leaving for a 9 day trip down to California to Yosemite, IRA's, and Shasta.

In other news... www.conquerthewest.com go there. It's here. Awesome!

Middle Sister Trip Report

The plan for this trip has varied quite a bit from the beginning, and never really was super set in stone. That said, I don't think this was what we really anticipated...

The original plan was to go up to the Olympics and spend a week making a 60 mile loop essentially expanding upon the trip we would take if we were just going to climb Olympus. We opted not to do that because the Olympics receive an outrageous amount of snow/rain and we decided to tack that section onto the end of our trip instead of trying to force it into the beginning. In hindsight not doing that was the smartest decision I have made in a while. Not because of weather, it likely would have been really nice up there, but because it turns out we are in no physical condition to embark on a 60 mile week long backpacking trip.

The most recent plan for this trip was tentatively to climb some combination of Middle Sister, North Sister, and Broken Top depending on the snow/weather conditions, our pace, and general comfort level with North Sister and Broken Top once we got up there. The only mountain we ended up even making an attempt on was Middle Sister.

We left Corvallis Wednesday afternoon and after a couple quick stops ended up at the Pole Creek Trailhead at around 11 pm. We set up Justin's tent and passed out. We ended up sleeping until 9 am, by my normal standards that is still the middle of the night, but usually camping or backpacking everything is shifted forward 3-5 hours. Getting packed took an insanely long time and we were ready to go at noon.

Originally I wanted to make a snowboard descent of at least Middle Sister (and if we climbed it Broken Top), but there was no way I was going to carry boots and a board up in addition to everything else I had shoved in my pack. As the first trip that Justin and I took together we were bringing all kinds of redundant stuff to get a feel for what gear we liked, what we used, and what we hated. In addition to that I was carrying a rope and some pickets, hoping to review glacier travel and rope team basics with Justin at some point. Needless to say, in hindsight the snowboard would have been much more beneficial than the rope ended up being.

We took off on the trail into the Three Sisters Wilderness. There was very little snow at the trailhead and we really had no idea how long it was going to be until we got to consistent snow. I had neglected to bring any other footwear (in the car) besides snowboard boots, mountaineering boots, and flip flops so I opted for the flip flops to start the hike. I made it about two tenths of a mile and 7 snow patches before I gave up and switched to mountaineering boots.

The trail was a total mess. The first mile or so was a maze of downed trees. The subsequent miles the trail was really indistinguishable because it was covered in snow and it was early enough in the season that there wasn't really a bootpack yet. We lost the trail a couple miles in and headed in what we believed to be the right direction. We were generally right about where we should be headed (towards the mountain), but didn't realize that going this way would actually take longer because it was a longer walk through the trees where we couldn't really be sure about where we were going without stopping and breaking out the map and GPS or compass. Our alternate route forced us to practically traverse to where the trail would have taken us to avoid ending up on the South ridge of North Sister.

Lesson 1: Trails exists where they are for a reason.

Justin was struggling with some combination of lack of fitness, lack of sleep, and abundance of altitude. This slowed our progress and we ended up camping at around 7250 feet on the Northern flank of the Hayden Glacier. We originally planned on climbing Middle Sister that afternoon and camping in the saddle between Middle and North Sister at around 9250 feet, that pretty much went out the window when we started hiking at noon. The tentative backup plan was to camp in that saddle but not summit anything until Friday. Obviously we were still a ways from even making that goal.

I can't complain about our campsite though. It ended up being much nicer than where we would have stayed if we had tried to get up to the saddle. We found a nice strip of bare ground mostly protected by a large boulder with perfect views of everything from Broken Top to North Sister. We setup camp, made dinner, and were asleep by 8:30 (before it was dark).

Lesson 2: Quesadillas are the quintessential backcountry food.

Friday morning we, again, slept way too late. We got up, ate a quick breakfast and packed our bags for a day trip up Middle Sister leaving the camp set up. We made a little better time than we had been making the previous day because the snow was still firm pretty much the entire way up. We traversed the ridge to the North of the Hayden Glacier all the way up to the saddle. Justin, still wasn't feeling great and we stopped at the saddle to make lunch and melt more snow for water before climbing the last pitch up the North ridge to the summit.

Lunch consisted, much like dinner last night, of quesadillas and the rare American variation of the quesadilla, the cheese and tortilla wrap. We melted enough water for me to refill my bottle and Diesel and I took off towards the summit. Justin opted for a nap in the sun.

The hike up the summit ridge wasn't so much technical or difficult as it was unwieldy. The slope was fairly steep, approaching 50+ degrees in places. But more importantly, it was a horrendous mix of snow types and consistencies. Within 5 feet you could run into softer new snow, hard wind-packed ice, soft spring snow, hard spring snow, and rhyme (ice). Even with 2 ice axes I felt off balance and uncertain exactly how the next step or plant of the ice axe would take.

By this point in my relationship with Diesel I have pretty much concluded that anything that I can climb (aside from technical rock) he can climb better. He is, however, very good at knowing what he can and can't do. Once we got off of the original slope onto the steeper portion of the ridge he found a warm rock to lie on and decided he had had enough. It took me 15 or so minutes to climb the steeper pitch while he waited at the bottom. Less than 30 seconds after I had crested the steeper part of the ridge and was out of his sight I saw him in a dead sprint up the hardest part of the climb towards me. It took him about 30 seconds to climb what had taken me 15 minutes.

Lesson 3: Don't worry about Diesel so much

We climbed the rest of the way to the top past several false summits and were on top by 2:30 pm. Hung out on top for a little, took a few pictures, and headed back down. The climb down was fairly straightforward except for the one steeper section I mentioned earlier. Diesel seemed to enjoy sliding partway down, and definitely enjoyed chasing me as I glissaded down parts. We got back to the saddle by 3:00 and were pretty wiped out. While I was climbing Justin had been stockpiling water so we refilled the water bottles and packed back up to head down to the camp.

At this point the heat and sun had really softened the snow. We were able to glissade about halfway down to the camp before it became impossibly soft. We got to camp and deliberated between staying there until the morning when the snow was firmer to hike out, and packing up and heading down now in the knee deep slush.

Ultimately we decided to press on and we packed up our camp and headed out. Between our camp and the trees we were sinking in almost to our knees every step we took. Diesel, who is usually light on his feet, was even sinking up to his stomach. We didn't really have a great plan for descending, we knew we wanted to try and meet back up with the trail farther out than where we had left it, but we knew it would be hard to find the trail in its current state.

We cruised down to about 6500 feet and met up with a pair of ski tracks that were headed back in the general direction of the trail and ultimately the trailhead. We presumed these were from the pair that left right before us on Thursday with skis on their packs. Turns out those guys had climbed and skied down both Middle and South Sister, total trip mileage and elevation gain roughly doubling ours.

We were glad to have the ski tracks to follow, even though they took a slightly meandering path, simply because it took the thinking out of it, all we had to do was follow the ski tracks all the way back. And fresh ski tracks are a lot easier to follow than faint boot tracks from several freeze thaw cycles ago. Ultimately the ski tracks joined up with the climbers trail to North Sister and then back to the main trail. We did pass a party of 3 skinning up as we were coming down; looked like skis were the way to go this weekend...

We got back to the parking lot around 9 pm after losing the trail a couple more times once we got out of the snow and couldn't follow ski tracks or bootpack. Once back at the trailhead we haphazardly threw everything in the car and took off towards the nearest supermarket in Sisters. Justin was not feeling good at all at this point so we made a pit stop for him at a pizza place in "downtown" Sisters. We had planned on going to climb Broken Top on Saturday but neither of us were really feeling up to it at this point and we headed back towards Corvallis. Unsure of how we were going to feel in the morning we stopped at the Snowpark by Hoodoo Ski Area and stayed the night there. Justin sleeping in the tent and Diesel and I opting for the car. We got up in the morning and neither of us really felt like having another big adventure (this coupled with the fact that Justin looked like he was wearing red mittens from neglecting to apply sunscreen to the backs of his hands, killed any remaining enthusiasm) so we headed back toward Corvallis.

Lesson 4: Sunscreen on the back of your hands

The trip was a success from a planning standpoint, we pinpointed a handful of things that we did and didn't really need to be carrying and have a better idea of how to pack for the rest of the summer. Our next trip down to California for 10 days will hopefully serve the same purpose as a lower scale testing trip for spending the entire summer living out of the car.

Follow (read: stalk) us on Loopt

I have added a Loopt widget to the bottom of the blog for your stalking pleasure. I'm not really sure how I feel about it right now because it doesn't really integrate with blogger well. I wish it could integrate into the sidebar because placing it in the top is too obstructive and at the bottom it is too obscure. I also reduced the number of posts per page to 3 (from 7) to keep the page size down and hopefully keep the Loopt widget more accessable at the bottom of the page.

Next Adventure: Mount Hood this Friday or Saturday night if I can find someone to go with me... After that Yosemite, IRA's, and Mount Shasta.

Middle Sister Images

Check out more pictures from the trip here:

 http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2191782&id=19700119&l=9a59eeef25

And a few full quality panoramas (click the images for full quality version):

Broken Top, South Sister, and Middle Sister from our campsite

Broken Top and South Sister from 8500 feet

North Sister from 9500 feet on Middle Sister

Broken Top and South Sister at sunset

We're camping on Middle Sister tonight. A little bit of a slow day and a lot of cross country travel. We found a perfect campsite at around 7500 feet. With beautiful views of Broken Top, South, and Middle Sister.

Panorama taken from our camp.

We're at the Pole Creek Trailhead on the edge of the Three Sisters Wilderness. We'll be spending the next two nights out climbing Middle and North Sister.

Middle Sister and Broken Top

We're leaving Corvallis tonight to head up to the Three Sisters Wilderness for a quick backpacking trip as a warm up for the rest of our trip.

Were driving (hopefully) to the Pole Creek Trailhead and camping there tonight. Climbing Middle Sister tomorrow and setting up camp in the saddle between North and Middle Sister. Attempting North Sister on Friday and heading back to the car. Driving to the trailhead for Broken Top and making another attempt at broken top on Saturday before heading back to Corvallis.

I'm going to be carrying a snowboard and hopefully make snowboard descents of Broken Top and Middle Sister. We'll update you with a full report once we get back Saturday night.

Red Sox to Mount Hood - May 16-17

One of the longest 24 hour periods of my life. Woke up in Corvallis Saturday and drove up to Seattle with Evan to watch the Red Sox game at Safeco with him and James. Left right after the game and drove down to Timberline to climb Mt. Hood. Climbed all night/morning and drove back to Corvallis.

Totals:

10 hours of driving - we survived

4 hours of baseball - Red Sox victory

8 hours of hiking - no summit

2 out of 3 ain't bad.

We got up to Mount Hood later than we would have liked. Pulled into the parking lot around 2:30 am. Ideally we would have been hiking by 1 am or so but the game and drive back down took a little longer than we planned.

Packed our bags, put our gear on, filled out a permit, and started hiking by 3:15 am. It never got below freezing at the lodge and the snow all the way up to the lower portion of Palmer was pretty soft. Timberline grooms a hiker trail up the East side of the resort, which is helpful, and the snow was actually a pretty good consistency for hiking especially considering how warm it was.

The day before (Saturday) it had been in the low 70's at the mountain and even though it wasn't that cold most of the snow above the Palmer mid station had firmed up pretty well. The forecast was for similar temperatures on Sunday which, combined with the recent snow over the previous week was why it was so important to get an early start to avoid ice fall in the crater.

There were probably 50-60 other people already on the mountain by the time we started hiking at 3:15, you could see a small army of headlamps leading up the whole route.

The hike up to the top of Palmer was uneventful, just a long snow slog up a semi groomed track. The groomers were working full time to get the summer park built, which is conveniently located right next to the climbers trail, so we were bombarded with the pleasant aroma of diesel exhaust for the first hour or so. The other thing we found interesting/frustrating was being passed by a snow cat going full bore up the mountain with a couple of people with skis inside. It took what was a 2 hour hike for us and turned it into a 10 minute cruise for the lucky (read: lazy) people inside.

We got to the top of Palmer right at Sunrise and took a couple minutes to rest and snap a few pictures. From there the route is more free form up towards Crater Rock. We passed a number of tents between the top of Palmer and Crater Rock, probably 6 groups of people had setup camps between 9,000 and 10,000 feet. We stopped around 9,500 feet to put crampons on and switch from poles to ice axes. This whole time we had been avoiding the suns advances and hiking into the diminishing shadows. We never actually saw the sun until we were almost to the hogsback, and it was almost perpetually sunny a few hundred feet below us.

After putting crampons on we passed several groups of people descending. Some had summited, probably a little more than half hadn't. At this point we started hearing stories of someone who had taken a fall on the traverse from the hogsback to the Old Chute and was being attended to by a doctor who happened to be up there at the right time.

The exact details are still unclear but I believe this man had either slipped, misstepped, or been hit by ice fall around 6 am while he was traversing over to the Old Chute. At this point the snow was very firm and he slid several hundred feet down into the "Devils Kitchen" section of the Crater. Most people believe that this route poses little danger aside from ice/rock fall because it isn't overwhelmingly steep and a fall is typically of little consequence. However at 6 am the snow was hard enough that this man was unable to self arrest and he actually suffered several broken bones and some damage to his face. The people who were trying to rescue/evacuate this climber were under constant barrage from ice fall because of the location where his fall took place was essentially a funnel for ice as it melted off the cliffs above.

We got to the bottom of the hogsback around 7 am. At this point it was pretty much out of the question to take the standard route up the hogsback and across the traverse to the Old Chute. This was for both courtesy and safety reasons. If people were traversing above the injured climber they ran the risk of either falling in the same place or generating ice fall above and taking out both the injured climber and his rescuers.

The other option that some people were taking, was to traverse across the lower portion of the "Devils Kitchen" and then head straight up the Old Chute from the bottom of the crater. Hopefully staying low enough on the traverse to avoid ice fall and then heading up the center of the chute to avoid ice falling from the cliffs on either side. We even saw a pair of climbers ascending the western most face in the crater, a much steeper wall (approaching 50 degrees) but much wider and therefore less prone to ice fall.

We hung out at the bottom of the hogsback for about an hour and watched a few parties descend and several other parties weigh their options for ascending the Old Chute. While we were there several other groups decided against making a summit attempt and after watching ice fall increase dramatically as things warmed up with no end in site we decided to head back down.

I had carried a snowboard up, but had conveniently forgotten my snowboard boots in Corvalls, so I tried riding down in my mountaineering boots. Since we didn't summit, and were then ahead of schedule the snow down to the top of Palmer was still very very firm. Which, combined with the wrong boots made for some very uncomfortable snowboarding, and an almost complete inability to hold my heelside edge, or to initiate a turn in either direction. Most of the snow between Crater Rock and the top of Palmer was frozen post holes from people coming down in the heat of the day yesterday. Quite possibly the worst conditions I have ever snowboarded in.

Once we got down to the ski area and the groomed area below Palmer it went much smoother. James had brought a inflatable pool toy and flew down from about 9000 feet to within a mile of the parking lot. Once it got too soft for him to keep any speed I tried pulling him for stretches, which was ultimately a lot funnier than it was successful.

We got back to the parking lot around 10:45 am and took off back towards Corvallis.

An eventful start to our summer activities for sure and hopefully not an omen of things to come.

Tentative Trip Itinerary

I have put together a couple ways to see our tentative trip itinerary. If you have any suggestions, or would

like to offer us a place to stay anywhere please let me know. We are still pretty flexible as to the specific

places we go, and if anyone has suggestions we would love to hear them.

Google Maps: http://bit.ly/jsnpV

Because google doesn't understand that I can drive over the pass in North Cascades National Park I had to

start and end my trip there instead of in Corvallis, which makes things less clear on the map. The trip

starts at Q and works backwards through the alphabet with each destination on the map being a place we

are spending time. Ultimately making a giant, disfigured, figure 8.

Google Calendar: http://bit.ly/aazz6

Each event in the calendar, from June 16 on, corresponds to a destination on the map. The dates for everything except the rafting trips and the rest of May are still tentative.

Setting This Thing Up

Hi Everyone,

Of course when I say "Everyone" at this point I mean literally no one (if you ended up here on accident I'm sorry that this is all I have for you right now, but I imagine you aren't too broken up about it).

I'm still in the process of setting everything up, but this will be, hopefully, a pretty cool way to share our trip this summer with anyone who is interested. I will be posting, at least, one entry for each trip or mini trip we take and probably some more filler about random things that happen. I'm kind of on a Twitter tear right now, but I promise I'm going to try and tone it down for this and keep the posts relevant, exciting, or at least somewhat interesting and try to minimize the posts like "I am tying my shoe" and "I just ate dinner".