Wy'East Face, Mt. Hood Dec 11

Accessed the Wyeast face of Mt. Hood, via the Cascade ridge on the western boundary of Mt. Hood Meadows. Due to lack of snow, we made an early decision to just load the skis on our packs. Especially, since we  had a boot pack up the 40/45 degree slope in our very near future. Once we got to the Wyeast face, we were pleasantly surprised to find a consistent carpet of consolidated windpack. This made it easy for us to boot pack our way to the top  and didn€™t even need to bust out our crampons. Once there, we caught our breath from the strenuous climb, enjoyed the views into the crater and even watched a few climbers summiting on standard Southside route. Next on the Agenda? A nice descent down the Wyeast face back to the car. We originally were hoping to ride all the way down super bowl, into upper heather and then high traverse out of heather. Unfortunately, some very thick clouds caused some visibility and possible route finding issues, so we decided to play it safe and ride the ridge back down the way we came and made our final turns of the day through the ski area.