July 3, 2011, Mount Hood, South Side
7/3/11
OR Mt Hood
1035
0
It was our first time backcountry skiing at Hood.
We headed up to Timberline Lodge Saturday afternoon to find that the Alpine campground was closed, so we had to camp down lower.
All our research pointed to a midnight departure but that didn't really jive with our plan to ski down in spring conditions so we headed up the climbers route out of Timberline Lodge at 3:15 am. Super windy the whole time but clear skies. Kinda eerie with no moon and a ton of snow cats ripping around. After a couple thousand feet of vertical my buddy had a tough time since he didn't have ski crampons so we decided to put our skis on our back and boot it instead. Amazing how much easier skinning is! :)
When we got to Hogsback it looked like everyone was headed climbers left, we decided to break against convention and took climbers right around and above the bergschrund, which I believe is the Pearly Gates. It was a fun route!
We topped out around 10 and napped for a few hours. Things didn't really soften up top so we climbed down 100 feet of the old chutes before putting our skis on and suffered back down to just above Crater Rim which is where the skiing got good.
Looks like we were the only fools to carry our skis all the way up. We did see a lot of skiers on the way down. I'm guessing they went up to Crater Rim and then turned around. The skiing was awesome down from Crater Rim through Timberline. We had a blast.
We headed up to Timberline Lodge Saturday afternoon to find that the Alpine campground was closed, so we had to camp down lower.
All our research pointed to a midnight departure but that didn't really jive with our plan to ski down in spring conditions so we headed up the climbers route out of Timberline Lodge at 3:15 am. Super windy the whole time but clear skies. Kinda eerie with no moon and a ton of snow cats ripping around. After a couple thousand feet of vertical my buddy had a tough time since he didn't have ski crampons so we decided to put our skis on our back and boot it instead. Amazing how much easier skinning is! :)
When we got to Hogsback it looked like everyone was headed climbers left, we decided to break against convention and took climbers right around and above the bergschrund, which I believe is the Pearly Gates. It was a fun route!
We topped out around 10 and napped for a few hours. Things didn't really soften up top so we climbed down 100 feet of the old chutes before putting our skis on and suffered back down to just above Crater Rim which is where the skiing got good.
Looks like we were the only fools to carry our skis all the way up. We did see a lot of skiers on the way down. I'm guessing they went up to Crater Rim and then turned around. The skiing was awesome down from Crater Rim through Timberline. We had a blast.
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