Mt. Hood Trip Report

Hey gang, it’s Jamie your friendly NEM guide fresh from the land of the pine trees and hipsters, Portland,OR. I arrived in Portland late Thursday night where my friend, and long time climbing partner Dave Newton was waiting. After a short discussion on what we had been up too on the drive, we hit the sack for the night. The next day we started planning our assault on Mt. Hood. After packing and a quick run to Fred Meyers ( A west coast Wal-mart) for some groceries we were on our way to the mountain.
Dave and I had originally planned to climb the Devil’s Kitchen headwall so our packs were heavy to say the least. After a few hour hike to around 9,000 ft. We dug out camp and set our tent. Shortly followed by a hot tea and a broken tooth at the hands of a frozen snickers bar. After our late night snack, we turned in for the night for our 2 am wake-up. We woke up early to here the sounds of a very feisty mountain indeed. The sounds of constant avalanches and ice fall rocketing down at us like bullets. We made the Hogsback at roughly 10,500 ft. our summit for the day.
We spent the next day hanging out around Portland and trying some amazing food and micro-brews. The night before our second attempt while having a couple brews with Dave’s long time friend Simon we had thought we had scooped up another climber for our ascent on Mt. Hood. After a couple of hours talking and checking out some of Simons motorcycles, we thought he was in. Unfortunately, Simon had a few too many the night before summit day so he had to pass on this round.
We headed to the Timberline lodge (were the outside shots of the Shining were filmed) once again and spent the night in the car in the parking lot. We woke up around 2:30 am for our alpine style push on Mt. Hood. We came out of the gate at just short of a run up the mountain. After about an hour and a half or so we reached the top of the Palmer ski lift, where we had some hot coffee and hoped the white out we just pushed into would clear. As the clouds lifted, Dave and I pushed on to a much more mellow Mt. Hood. We roped up at around 9500ft just before the Hogsback. As we crossed the Hogsback we noticed that the Bergshrund that hadn’t been there the last time, had begin to show a crack. Dave and I quickly hopped the Shrund and continued through a 30ft. section of ice with a lot of run out. Once we passed the ice it was a quick jaunt to the summit at around 8:30am in amazing conditions. We took a few photos with my phone of us on top and quickly came down the mountain.
We passed a few folks on their way up awfully late and chatted with them about conditions and the objective hazards. We then took off our crampons and began to glissade our way down the hill. We even had one run of nearly 1000ft.! Although the run managed to once again tear my pants but not were my mom had just fixed them(Thanks mom). Once we hit the parking lot we quickly changed and headed to the local diner for some eggs and omelette’s.
I spent the next days doing some tourist stuff around Portland. I saw an amazing waterfall and had some awesome local cuisine. All in all Portland was amazing and I’d like to thank Dave Newton and Bailey Apple for being such gracious hosts. Dave will be coming to Mass next month and you might even see him at the local crags with us. Well gang, I’ve got a lot of really dirty gear to wash so Ta-Ta for now.