Mt. Hood: late season south side ascent?

Hi all,

First post on TAY (woohoo).

I'm looking to do a late ascent of Hood(southside rt) this weekend but the rangers report for hood calls out the following "The route through the Pearly Gates, which has been the most popular route for many years was not done by many climbers this year. A 15' vertical step formed over the winter changing the complexity of the route. Not sure how this will shake out for next year at this point." Anyone climbed this within the past 3 weeks? Given my limited knowledge of this step up feature (last climbed hood in 04) and that it's technically out of season down there I'm leaning toward bagging this in favor of an Adams ski.

Any beta or advice would be appreciated.

Cheers,
Brandon

The majority of the folks that ski Hood don't ski that last pitch anyway.
The ski down from the Hogsback, Crater Rock or Illumination Saddle is always sweet and well worth the climb if there's still enough coverage, which you may be able to determine from the Timberline web cam.

Of course, if you're a "summiter" first, and skier second, then you have a new set of challenges to deal with on the last pitch.

Thanks Ron

judging from the web cam shot here: www.kgw.com/livecams/popup_timberline.html it looks like there's not much left and we'd be pushed skiers left pretty far.

I'm about 50/50 summiter skier so I think we'll go try to grab adams instead.

appreciate the quick reply. I can't wait to ramp up on the site and do some serious ski mtneering

Cheers,
Brandon