December, 3 Mt. Hood, Tilly Jane to Cooper Spur

Since we had some nice weather forecasted, I thought it would be nice to work the legs and get some nice views on the north side of Hood. Based on the reports from a few climbers we met at the snow park, the snow was super thin or nonexistent on the first section  tilly jane trailhead.  So we had to pack our skis up for the first hour until we found some consistent coverage. We finally started skinning about where the trail encounters the first section from the Gnarl Ridge Burn.  Stopped at the tilly jane cabin for a quick tour for my French Colleagues and then continued up to the Copper Spur Shelter for lunch. We encountered a lot of snow glopping on our skins through the section of trees after the tilly jane cabin until we reached tree line, it never makes for an easy tour when you are dragging around globs of snow. Stopped for a quick lunch at the cooper spur shelter and took in the beautiful views of Eastern Oregon, Mt. Adams, Mt Rainer and Mt. St Helens. We continued our way up  the cooper spur ridge on a mixture of wind & sun crust. We wanted to make sure we had plenty of time to get back to the car before it got dark, so we turned just a few 100 feet short of tie in rock. The ski down was actually fairly enjoyable considering it hadn€™t snowed in a week and the condition were variable. Decent was as expected, we had some good turns on some ribbons of wind packed all the way down to the shelter.