12/23/2010, White River Canyon, Mt Hood
12/23/10
OR Mt Hood
5772
11
Met up with RonG for a tour in White River today. Since it's not that common to see TR's for Hood, I thought I would post our adventure today. NWAC indicated moderate conditions and up to 2 feet of new snow bonding to a rain crust from about 10 days ago, I wanted to see how well this new snow was bonding myself. At about 5800 feet, E,SE aspect we found ~30 inches of consolidated snow to the crust. Isolated the column and over 30 hits from the shoulder finally got the slab to shear at the crust with what I would say a Q2 as it was smooth, but obviously not a fast shear. Bonding of the slab showed strong we proceeded with our tour as planned.
Our first line took us down into the first drainage, we toured east climbing and skiing each face. The middle fork of the river requires crossing. Many ski options are available in this area and our tour so far indicated the most easterly aspects holding some really nice snow on some shorter pitches shadowed from sun exposure, with heavier snow on others. We pointed our skins uphill and aimed our lines accordingly for some yo-yo's in some nice powder conditions. Leaving our mark on a really nice pitch we toured further down the canyon for another river crossing hoping to take advantage of a distance skin track back up to Timberline. We also wanted to ski a lap in that area, ski tracks from another party looked like it could be good, but while visibility today was good per se' the light was flat giving us vertigo looking down into the canyon... one of those where's the edge of the cornice type of visibility. We passed on the last run and kept our skin track up to the lot...
Enjoyed some great skiing today in the White River.
Our first line took us down into the first drainage, we toured east climbing and skiing each face. The middle fork of the river requires crossing. Many ski options are available in this area and our tour so far indicated the most easterly aspects holding some really nice snow on some shorter pitches shadowed from sun exposure, with heavier snow on others. We pointed our skins uphill and aimed our lines accordingly for some yo-yo's in some nice powder conditions. Leaving our mark on a really nice pitch we toured further down the canyon for another river crossing hoping to take advantage of a distance skin track back up to Timberline. We also wanted to ski a lap in that area, ski tracks from another party looked like it could be good, but while visibility today was good per se' the light was flat giving us vertigo looking down into the canyon... one of those where's the edge of the cornice type of visibility. We passed on the last run and kept our skin track up to the lot...
Enjoyed some great skiing today in the White River.
Thanks for the good report. Always nice to see people talking about getting out on Hood.
Excellent TR.
Nice TR! I'm hoping to get some turns in on Hood between now and Monday while I'm home for Christmas.
Looks like some pretty good snow! Thanks for the report!
Nice -- great to see another Hood TR. Stoudema, just put you on the home page...
Nice! I love White River, Zig Zag and Newton Canyons
Awesome Marcus - thanks! Merry Christmas all!
A buddy and I skied in there yesterday from the WR snopark with similar conditions. The big moraine in the middle was still holding some great snow and we did a few laps next to your tracks. We decided to give the south facing moraine a shot and ended up being very disappointed with breakable crust, but I kind of expected that.
The terrain in WR has got to be some of the best on Mt Hood IMO.
The terrain in WR has got to be some of the best on Mt Hood IMO.
The big moraine we skied in the middle I bet will be the sweet spot on future trips. We had our eye on that S aspect too, but did another run where we were, then headed down for something completely different but should have just lapped up rows of tracks where we were, that was some very nice snow and a nice longer run for that elevation.
Thanks everyone for the compliments. It's fun to read a thread here about Hood, I notice there are not many of them though and often wonder if its for concerns of over crowding. Seems Mt Hoods terrain pales in comparison to our neighbor to the north.
Thanks everyone for the compliments. It's fun to read a thread here about Hood, I notice there are not many of them though and often wonder if its for concerns of over crowding. Seems Mt Hoods terrain pales in comparison to our neighbor to the north.
Thanks for the Hood post. I agree with eweiseth that it is nice to see people talking about Hood. I know I would like to see more so I posted a recent trip. Mt. Hood - Newton Creek - 12-19-2010 - Headed up tomorrow, I'll try and let TAY'ers know what we find.
I was touring on that middle morain last year on what seemed like consolidated snow but ended up setting off a pretty good sized slab avalanche. The crown was only 2 feet tall but it was almost 100 feet across. Luckily it was very slow moving and even though I got carried I never got buried. Sounds like people are being safe and digging pits and such, just thought I'd mention it because it was quite a wake-up call for me.
One of my favorite tours is up a side arm of white river and into skylar bowl and then up the wyeast face. Very condition dependent but skiing from 10'000 to 4,000 on such varied terrain is a real treat.
One of my favorite tours is up a side arm of white river and into skylar bowl and then up the wyeast face. Very condition dependent but skiing from 10'000 to 4,000 on such varied terrain is a real treat.
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