June 28, Mt Hood Old Climber's Chute

Since I had toured on Mt Hood so many times, yet never skied from the summit, despite skiing from the summit of so many other volcanoes (Shasta & Shastina, Adams, South Sister, Lassen, Baker (Grant & Sherman), Rainier, Middle Sister), I decided that we had to do this the most gaper way possible.  Plus after 16+ mile roundtrip loop the previous day (including way too much hiking, lots of driving, and too little sleep), a semi-rest day was welcome.






Hanging out at Hogback, waiting for my partner to come into view.  (He booted, while my DyNA boots and I took a very nicely angled and efficient skintrack.)






Looking down on my partner (the single dot above the pair of dots) from West Crater Rim.






Watching clouds billowing in from the other side.




I eventually started getting a bit tired of the wind up there and booted over to the summit proper to snap a quick self-portrait . . . which of course came out not showing any view at all, sigh.

I returned to the top of the face (which is misleading called the Old Climber€™s €œChute€) to see my Portland partner coming into view.  And with all the various delays, we ended up timing the snow conditions absolutely perfectly (albeit by complete luck).





Conditions stayed nice until a bit above the Palmer, then turned to complete mush -- this maybe around 1pm?  The problem is that the overnight freezes have affected only a relatively thin layer.  Once that softens up, then it's just completely unconsolidated snow underneath.