8/1/09 mt hood

Started on the Palmer route at 4 am. Easy skin to Crater Rock. A few hundred feet below, the snow is gone and about 1500ft must be traversed on foot. Above that the traverse across was showered with rock fall, sizes ranging from tennis ball to footballs coming down almost constantly. Old glacial ice everywhere, with some patches of soft snow here and there. Looking down it was clear that Zig Zag is also burned. I wasn't expecting much after the heat wave, but, hope of a continuous descent of Hood was keeping me awake during the drive from Seattle. On the brightside, got some great turns on the groomers after the lifts closed (felt kind of weird riding the corduroy, should I be posting this on the inbounds link?) and finished my first year of skiing EVERY month and 100+days for the year! August turns are better than no turns at all.
pics to follow...