Mt Hood
6/15/08
OR Mt Hood
1159
2
My friend Steve and I completed the high level Mt. Hood traverse yesterday - clockwise. Started at 4:15 am and were finished by 12:15pm. Snow was hard and icy till the Snow dome (8:00am) and then a combination of good corn and softer stuff. The crossing over the Yocum from the Reid to the Sandy has plenty of snow and although icy was nice and smooth. Took our skis off twice between Cathedral ridge and the Coe. From the snow dome to Cooper spur we made the mistake of going below the ice fall on the Elliot and had a long climb in occasionaly very soft snow up the other side of the Elliot (punched through into a crevasse also) and then the morraine onto Cooper spur. Because of exposed rock patches we had to climb to 9000' on the Cooper Spur ridge until we could traverse over to WyEast. We still ended up too low on the East side of White River Canyon and had to climb down a couple of long talus slopes before being able to traverse the bottom of WRC and up the other side joining the Palmer ski run about half way down. A Very nice day.
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NICE JOB wow what a long day. Think i may have seen your tracks down there on the Reid Glacier. That ice fall is sort of spooky (at least it was for me years ago...) lots of slots/ or potential slots... Sounds like fun but don't think I have the stamina to do that: "Man must know his limitations"...Dirty Harry I believe... Way to go-- that is so inspiring......
Not that long a day, 8 hours. In perfect snow conditions earlier in the season it should be possible to knock an hour or so off that without too much trouble. In fact in terms of effort it is not realy that much more than going to the summit, the elevation gain is about the same. I doubt if you saw our tracks as it was pretty icy when we descended the Reid but that is a great ski and there were no open slots on the section we skied. Nice work on the Reid, I would love to ski that but only in perfect condictions...
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