Why do in one day what you can do in three?
From what Becky and I had read, it seems like most
everyone knocks out a Mt. Hood circumnavigation in a single day, but we decided
to spend a couple nights out so we could be leisurely and have time for a ski
of the Wy'east face on our last day. We figured a late morning start on day 1
would allow us to ski the west and north aspects later in the day and get
softer snow, then after camping we could catch the east side of the mountain in
the morning sun.
We skinned out of Timberline and hit Illumination Saddle
around noon. Coverage and snow conditions on the Reid Glacier were great. Only
had a couple crevasses starting to open up as we scooted through between Yocum
Ridge and the glacier at around 8000ft then made a descending traverse to the
broad lower Yocum Ridge at about 7500ft.
We had a short walk on dirt/scree over to the Sandy Glacier where we
tried to hold a contour. We
might’ve been a little low
on this next section as we had to skin and boot back up a bit to get onto the
Ladd Glacier. From there
it was a smooth shuffle across the Ladd and Coe glaciers. A short, mostly snow bootpack
got us to the Snowdome/Langille Glacier side of the mountain where we found a
recently abandoned campsite so we made use of their snow platform and settled
in for the rest of the day. Not
sure how easy it is to access the NW side of Hood, but wow there is some fun
looking terrain around the Ladd and Glisan glaciers area, wish we would’ve had more time to spend over
there.
The next morning we opted to get in a nice mellow ski
down the Elliot to about 7000ft where we were able to squeak in a descending
traverse onto Cooper Spur. The
skin back up the spur to 9000ft was punctuated with many breaks to watch the
hardier souls climbing up and skiing down the Cooper Spur route. From 9000ft we were able to rip skins and
slide quickly around the east side of the mountain all the way to the base of
the Wy’east route. Only
had to scoot around a couple opening crevasses on the Newton Clark, the
coverage is just really, really good on Hood right now. It was only lunchtime
but we’d already arrived
at our next camp. Since the snow was well-cooked we spent a lazy afternoon
reading and playing cards.
Around dinnertime we had a surprising gear malfunction,
the two partially filled smaller cartridges we had been using with our jetboil
ran dry so we moved on to using a new canister. Either the threads on our
jetboil stove are damaged or the new canister was defective but we couldn’t get the fuel threaded on to
the stove it just spun and spun and then popped off. Fortunately it was warm
enough that a trash bag solar still and nalgenes filled with snow on warm rocks
provided ample water we just had to suffer through eating a dinner of cold
ramen noodles, bleck.
Sunday morning we were up at 5:30, and on the move by
6:30, we left the camping gear behind and with light packs cramponed up the Wy’east face, we were
circumnavigating the mountain, but we needed some good fall-line turns too.
Corn-o-clock came fast and by the time we hit the top of the face at 9 the
slope was ready to ski. Although
the face is currently marred with quite a bit of debris (looks like a skier
triggered sluff run amok from days earlier) there was still ample smooth corn
available.
We were back at camp in no time and after grabbing our
tent we started down the White River glacier.
We should’ve put
the skins on and regained the south side up high but we figured we could use
one of the several old ski tracks we saw that contoured west out of the valley
lower down. The eastern
exposure mixed with the hot temps made the traverse out of the White River
canyon pretty unpleasant, but we eventually popped up and over and had the home
stretch down to the car.
Given the dirty snow and soon to be patchy coverage
between Wy'east and Timberline - climbing out of Mt.Hood Meadows is definitely
the way to go right now for a better fall-line ski to your car.
After our ghetto cold ramen dinner, we were happy to stroll
up the parking lot and fill our bellies at the all-you-can-eat lunch buffet at
Timberline Lodge
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