May 21, 2005, Heather, Mt Hood

The weather fooled us but we still had a good time. The last forecast I looked at Friday evening showed partly sunny skis w/ (I thought?) the discussion stating a ridge of high pressure being over the forecast area Saturday afternoon. Arriving at Hood it was overcast with high clouds and the upper mtn was intermittently obscured. The weather got worse as the day progressed.

As we were getting ready in the parking lot, Freshie and his friend arrived and introduced themselves to us. It was nice to meet you Freshie! To quote Maddog, it's always nice to put faces to names.

It was about halfway up Daisy (15minutes?) before the snow was consistently skinable. The snow was fairly dense and balled to our skins. Near the top of Cascade, due to the weather, we aborted our plans for Superbowl and headed towards Heather. We dug a couple of pits at the top of upper/mid Heather at 6900ft, one shovel compression test failed on 12 (10 taps from wrist, 2 from elbow) and . A few more laps ensued further down the canyon. Another compression test was performed at the top of one of these laps @6200ft on a slope that was more wind-protected (which represented what we were about to ski). The snow here was very dense and thick -- we could not get it to fail at all. There was a  ). It started to snow around 2 or so, getting pretty heavy at times.

Ann in Heather Canyon with the Wy'east face in the background:



We met Freshie again near the top of Shooting Star. They had skied Superbowl and reported strong winds on the upper mtn.

As we neared the base the snow turned to relatively heavy rain, and it rained all the way back home.

The forecast alludes to sunshine tomorrow afternoon. We will be out to verify.

More photos: