July 9, 2010, - Mt Hood Cooper Spur

Todd and I left the southern Willamette Valley around noon with the temperature creeping towards 90 (with a projected high in the upper 90's).  Having not been out recently, we were hoping to take advantage of some of the excellent corn snow everyone's been talking about.  We pulled into Cloud Cap parking lot about 4:15 or so and setup camp.  After some discussion, we decided to head up towards Cooper Spur to see if we could find some evening turns (our Saturday objective was Snowdome http://www.turns-all-year.com/skiing_snowboarding/trip_reports/index.php?topic=17136.msg72093#msg72093).  Here's a shot of the mountain on the ascent....



There was a pretty stiff breeze the whole way up which made the hot weather bearable and the snow was actually pretty good.  The coverage was still quite nice for this time of year, and we were able to link turns most of the way down to the timberline trail.  Here's a shot of the Cooper Spur climbing route from the notch at 8500 feet....



The bowls in the Newton Clark canyon were really beckoning, but it was 7:30 and time to ski down.  The snow quality was really nice for the first 1500 feet or so, then turned to pollen must for the last 500 vertical.  Here's Todd ripping the middle pitch.....



Here's a shot of me on the ride down.....



This was only the second time I remember riding in a t-shirt and shorts and not being the slightest bit cold.  The short hike back to camp went quickly and after we had some grub and got a fire going, we were treated to a great sunset.  Not a bad way to start our trip!  One interesting note - at the spur at 8500 feet I turned over a rock and there were about 100 lady bugs all clustered up in a bunch.  Any ideas on what they were doing up there?