On May 11 we met up Sam Volk and Emily Sullivan for a ski mountaineering birthday party for Keeks on Wy’East (Mount Hood)!
But first BOB, what did we learn!
- Well Tom, we learned that you can camp in the Timberline parking lot. We camped at the overflow lot without any issue, technically you aren’t supposed to but I think they are chill with climbers staying overnight
- 7:30 AM was a good start time for us, we ended up skiing down around 12:30, probably depends on time of year!
- Be careful skiing down old chute, you are fall line from a fumarole!
- Ski crampons and boot crampons both felt very necessary
- The Pearly Gates were much easier to climb with two tools in their current condition
On Monday we woke up real early and drove about 12 hours from Salt Lake City to Timberline Lodge at the base of Mount Hood in Oregon. We met up with our budz Sam Volk and Emily Sullivan there for a ski party the next morning.
We discussed at length leading up to the trip when we should get a start in the morning, some of us were adamant on a midnight start and some of us wanted to start around dawn. We sort of settled on around a 2AM start based on all the beta we had received from people but that evening we chatted up a skier in the parking lot named Nick and he basically told us we would have a miserable time if we left that early. He had left at 10:30 that morning and skied the run in great corn conditions. After talking to Nick we decided that we would wake up at 6 and try to leave by 7.
The next morning we woke up at 6 after a restless night of hearing all of the other climbers leaving the lot in the middle of the night, OH DID WE MENTION IT WAS KIANNAS BDAY?!?! Thats right, this was also doubling as a birthday party ski mountaineering party! We made some coffee and oatmeal, struggled hard with turning our brains on and managed to bumble out of the parking lot by 7:30AM. The first couple thousand feet are pretty uneventful skinning up the ski resort boundary until you reach the top of the Palmer lift around 8000’.
We switched to ski crampons pretty soon after this and once we got crater rock it felt like we were amongst it, we stopped here for a bit to check out the big stinky fumarole, pro-tip: this is the best place on the mountain to let out any big stinky farts you have been holding in
We transitioned to crampons and booting once we got onto the Hogsback ridge. Things started HEATING UP about now, super sunny and no wind! There was a pretty solid snow bridge across the bergschrund, so we were able to bop on up to the pearly gates pretty quick. Apparently the condition of the pearly gates change quite a bit year to year and throughout the season, this year there was about a 10 foot icy step that was a little tricky to get up. We had Sam go up first since he is the big time ice climber boi and set up a belay for us from up top, the extra security for this section was really nice since we aren’t really ice climbers at all. Sam tossed down one of his ice tools down on the rope so Kianna had two tools for this section, and Ryan was able to scramble up with his whippet and ice axe.
After the Pearly gates it was only about 100 mellow feet to the top! We got on up there and celebrated and took some pics! Super awesome views from up there. We were able to see Jefferson and the Sisters to the South and then Adams and Rainier to the North!
Our descent plan was to ski down the Old Chute which required a little ridge walk from the summit. There is a little catwalk right before the entrance that was “in the worst shape I have ever seen in my life” according to Nick. This just meant that it was a skinny little section that dropped off on both sides, Sam belayed Emily and Kianna across this section, the pros of have a a great climber in your party who can set up stuff like that super fast!
There wasn’t a ton of room at the top of the old chute but we all managed to very carefully transition to skis without dropping any of our shit down the mountain. The top 20 feet was a little skinny and I think we all side slipped down this but we actually timed our day perfectly and the face was in super great corny conditions! But BEWARE! There is a big fumarole directly fall line from the old chute, people have slid into this thing before (Sharp End Podcast – Falling in a Fumarole), you definitely have to be careful of a fall here especially if you got an early-ass start and the run is still icy.
After the main face we pretty much had an awesome volcano party ski all the way down to the car! When we got to the car we had a quick birthday party bash for Keeks and eventually made our way down to Hood River to stay with Kianna’s friend Maggie and to jump off for our next adventure!
