Somehow Becky and I lucked out and our week of vacation lined up with some pretty nice weather. Even the day before we left, our itinerary was completely up in the air- completely dependant on weather and snow conditions...would we head north or south or who knows where.
Our little road trip started on Memorial Day weekend, but we figured that our prime destination of Mt.Shasta might be a bit of a zoo...so we pointed the car towards Central Oregon for a couple days. We had a great ski of South Sister as a nice warm-up for the week. Clouds came and went through the day, but it was still warm and the snow was good, although a bit sticky and mushy. We made it back into Bend just in time to grab dinner with Dru, Jen and their kiddos.
The next day, was to be the worst weather day on Shasta, so we delayed another day...took our time driving to California and headed over to Crater Lake. We'd been to Crater Lake several times with my family, but had never been there when there was still snow on the ground. As we drove towards the lodge, we saw a steep, short little slope running from the road to the crater rim....that slope needed some ski tracks on it. After 30 minutes of scooting uphill we had a lovely view of the lake from our solitary perch on Hillman Peak and had a short, fun ski back down. As we got back to the car, a park service truck was waiting next to us. We were worried about being lectured, but as it turned out, the two fellows had been wanting to snowboard that pitch for a while and were stoked to see someone playing on it.
On to Shasta, where we arrived at Bunny Flat trailhead a bit before sunset. It was nearly deserted, though the overflowing trashcans showed just how busy it had been that weekend. The next morning we shuffled on up the trail towards Helen Lake and our camp at 10,500ft. After 1.7 miles and 1,000ft of hiking we reached the Sierra Club shelter at Horse Camp and could put our skis on snow. The ski up to Helen Lake was quick and we spent the rest of the afternoon relaxing in the sun and reading.
The next morning, we both felt great so we skipped our acclimatization day and headed on up. The few other climbers that were camped near us had left hours earlier, so we had a quiet climb to the summit only seeing a few other people. The top 1,000ft wasn't quite soft, but we wanted to avoid the afternoon clouds that seemed to build every day, so we skied down to top of the Red Banks and took a break for the snow to soften. Around noon, the snow was perfect corn and we flew down Avalanche Gulch. Back at camp, we refilled our water bottles, grabbed some lunch and went back up. The afternoon heat was tremendous though and we didn't get more than about 1,100ft above camp before we ripped our climbing skins and skied back for the shade of the tent.
Rather than pack up camp, we decided to stick around for another day and ski Avy Gulch again. Unfortunately, some high clouds on Thursday morning delayed the softening of the snow and our repeat ski wasn't quite as soft as Wednesday. Back at Helen Lake we broke camp and headed for the car. We managed to find a dirty gully of snow that got us a bit past Horse Camp and only had a bit more than a mile of hiking to get back to the car.
Friday morning, we pointed the car toward Northern Oregon to meet our family in Welches. The family was gathering that weekend at Mt.Hood to celebrate the scattering of my grandfather's ashes on the summit. I had been stressing over whether we'd get good enough weather to pull this off for a while, as we'd picked this weekend months ago, but the forecast looked great. As usual, we drove up to Timberline after dark and crashed in the back of the car. We left the car at 3am and saw a steady line of headlamps high on the mountain - lots of folks had left around midnight.
We reached the top of the Palmer snowfield around sunrise, racked our skis and switched to boot crampons. As we got to the hogsback we had a great view of the masses above us crawling around. We had no interest in getting on the steeper terrain with so many guided parties and ill-prepared folks, but we took our time and started a slow traverse from the west and by the time we got to the old chute, everyone was out of sight. The chute was very firm, but the bootpack was good and there were plenty of ice axe holes for self-belaying. As we reached the top, we were thrilled that the morning crowds were gone and only one other climber was on the summit ridge. Becky and I got our picture taken with my grandfather's axe and some family photos and then the other climber headed down. Becky and I were able to have a quiet moment on the summit to release his ashes and then start down the chute before any other traffic showed up. By the time we reached our skis, the snow was softening.
We had a lunch date with our family at Timberline, so we couldn't wait around for softer snow, but we made good time and got to Timberline right around noon. Of all the times, I've climbed Hood, I never knew that the dining room had a buffet lunch. Pigging out for a couple hours while catching up with our family was a wonderful end to a week of sun and snow.
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