Home > Trip Reports > May 4-6, 2008, Mt Hood Silcox Hut ski/climb

May 4-6, 2008, Mt Hood Silcox Hut ski/climb

5/4/08
OR Mt Hood
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Posted by JMor on 5/8/08 12:59am
19 of us did our annual ski/climb of Mt Hood  :D.  This was the 11th annual visit to the Silcox Hut for Ron and me along with other veteran "hutters" and new participants of the "Wild Heart" group.  The weather was great on Sunday, with Mt Hood holding more snow than I've seen in the past 11 years.  Ron, Andrejs, and I did some lift serviced skiing Sunday morning prior to meeting everyone else, taking advantage of the new Jeff Flood-Still Creek high speed quad lift.  After several runs and a trip to the top of the Magic Mile, our objective was to ski to Government Camp and take advantage of snow coverage all the way down.  Andrejs wife Shirley was our car shuttle back to Timberline in time for the 1:00 arrival of the rest of our group.  Skiing to "Govy" with great snow conditions, groomers from the top of the Magic Mile, to corn, to a little heavier towards the end.  19 of us met in the Rams Head Bar, then loaded bags and baggage in the snow cat for the ride to the Silcox Hut.  Chris, (Scotsman) lead the "snow school" activities for the 8 people who had decided for a summit attempt on Monday.  7 of us decided to ski the White River Glacier down to hwy 35 on Monday instead of the Summit attempt, and the rest did lift serviced skiing. The route to the summit is the same as Amar describes here.  Congrats to all 8 who reached the summit, Chris and his 16 year old son Stewart, JW and Chuck skiing from the summit, and the rest of the summit crew.  (Someone from the summit teams can fill in more info on those conditions.)  7 of us climbed to the Hogsback and entered the White River Glacier just below the €œDevils Kitchen€.  Very firm snow conditions at this 10,100 elevation prompted us to traverse west to the main bowl of the glacier where the snow had softened and corned up.  Skiing was fantastic as we made our way down, carefully maneuvering around a crevasse at the lower roll of the bowl.  This particular run to hwy 35 is 5 miles long with 6,000 vertical feet of skiing  :D.  The lower elevation snow softened to heavy, and grabby, but manageable skiing.  Shirley and Diane provided car shuttles back to Timberline.  Photos to follow.
As allways. much thanks to you and Ron for organizing this marvellous annual trip and allowing me to bring my family. It's very special to have my son  and wife along and mix with all the terrific personalities on this trip.

Much kudos to my rope team of Stewie, Tangerine(Sidnie) and Ovrthills( Michael) who made the summit with me.

Stewie wants to do Rainier next but I'm going to make him read Amar's TR first.
Scotty

What a fun and smart group of skiers/climbers.  Thanks to Chris for leading our rope team with competence and patience.  And special thanks to Ron J and Mad Dog  (aka chopped liver) for organizing and including my wife, Sidnie, and I in a great ski trip.  The skiing below Crater rock was good in sun softened wind affect but the best skiing was in the "Old Chute" according to those wise enough to take their skis to the summit.  After down climbing to the Hogsback, I reminded myself why I am more of a skier than an climber.

Good job gang. 

Some photos from the summit team are here.  The Hogsback has deviated significantly to the west since last year, so we opted to take the old route up the Mazama chute.  Just below the bergschrund, we traversed left over reasonably steep snow, then ascended to a steep chute.  Above the chute, there was a boot track over easy ground to the summit.  The descent back to the Hogsback was time-consuming but not particularly difficult.

The snow on the descent from the Hogsback by mid-afternoon was nicely corned up, but was probably a touch overdone down low.  It would have probably been a little less grabby if we'd made the descent sooner

Thanks again to Ron & Jeannette for organizing this trip again, to Scotty for the refresher course, and to my rope team for the extra encouragement.

Very nice photos Mark.Thanks for the slideshow.

Good times guys! Absolutely beautiful up there, I am totally jealous you all went and got it. Also seems to be a neat venue in general, thanks for sharing- now I really want to go ski!

Chris

Another year of fun with great people at a wonderful location.  Some pictures from the skiing contingent are here.

Figured I'd better get my pics posted for this trip before the month closed out.

As Jeanette mentioned above, several of the "non-summiters" on this trip climbed up to the crater and skied the White River Glacier and associated drainage down to Hwy 35.  Several have asked for more info on that ski line hence the following track map to accompany the info:

If you click on the thumbnail and then zoom in on the image you should be able to get enough detail to follow the various tracks.

The red track is our ski climb from the top of the Palmer and subsequent ski down to the Silcox in 2007.  On that descent we dropped in to the WRG at about 9800 skied that upper bowl and then traversed back out to the west under a sizeable crack on to the Palmer at about 9200, and then back down to the Silcox.  That crack was still there on our 2008 run.  In fact it was bigger.

The yellow track is our ski on this last trip. 
Here's a shot of Jeanette at just about the same elevation as where we dropped in on this latest descent:

you can see the lower part of the WRG drainage behind her and if you look closely you can see the Hwy 35 bridge across the drainage about two thirds of the distance between her skis and the Steel Cliffs to the left of the picture.
On this descent we dropped in to the WRG quite a bit higher, about 10,200 onto the east facing slope that faces the Steel Cliffs.  That was a mistake, as it never gets much sun and was like boilerplate.  Once we traversed right around into the main upper bowl of the WRG then life was good.  A couple of obvious cracks to avoid but nothing major.  It is a great run that I think everyone should do at least once.  This shot is take from down near the bridge at 4200 looking back up 6,000 vertical feet at where we started at the top of the White River Glacier:


The purple tracks on the map are from Sunday morning before we met the rest of the gang.   Andrejs, Jeanette and I did some lift skiing on the new Still Creek lift and then skied down to Government Camp.  That's a fun one, too.

The blue tracks are from prior year's lift skiing which I can't seem to get deleted fro the map  ::)

The rest of my photos that could be deemed "publicly presentable" ;-) are posted HERE.


I'll add my thanks to RJ and MD for a fun trip, thanks. Jerry, great fun skiing from the top with you. ;D ;D ;D Jerry and I survived the down climb of the narrow ridge in ski boots ::) and then skied the climbers alternate route back to the hogsback. The snow was good and smooth and had softened to nice corn for the descent. We all returned to the hut in time to enjoy the sunset from the "smart table" overlooking Timberline and the mountains and valley's to the South.

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may-4-6-2008-mt-hood-silcox-hut-ski-climb
JMor
2008-05-08 07:59:27