July 2, 2012, Mt Hood, Snowdome

Today was Jonathan Shefftz's last day of a five day summer PNW skip trip for which most of we had poor weather (including getting soaked by rain on the Southside of Mt Hood and skinning up Adam's False Summit in high winds and such a bad whiteout just skinning caused vertigo). The forecast for today was excellent, so we knew today would be the best weather day of the trip. We were considering two options for today: Snowdome or the Wyeast Face. We choose Snowdome for a few reasons. First, with the precipitation of the last week (

Once on the glacier we roped up to cross it and then unroped once we gained the ramp at 7600€™ that leads to Snowdome. Even though Snowdome is a glacier (per the USGS topo part of the Eliot glacier), it is minimally crevassed and the risk of a crevasse fall at this time of year is extremely low so being roped up just creates more risk.

View of Snowdome from its base:


As we skinned up thin clouds surrounded us creating interesting lighting:


We reached the top of the dome around 1:30. Jonathan at the top getting ready to descend:


The skiing on Snowdome was fantastic smooth corn:



We took the upper ramp that leads onto the Eliot. On this steeper aspect the snow was much heavier and we skied it cautiously. We descended all the way to TJ stopping right where the snow stops in the middle of the TJ amphitheater. There was plenty of seats to make our transition:


TJ trail back to the snowpark: