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.