Home > Trip Reports > May 26-28, 2017, Mt.Hood circumnavigation + Wy'east face

May 26-28, 2017, Mt.Hood circumnavigation + Wy'east face

5/26/17
OR Mt Hood
2473
4
Posted by Pete A on 5/29/17 12:04am
Why do in one day what you can do in three?   :)

From what Becky and I had read, it seems like most everyone knocks out a Mt. Hood circumnavigation in a single day, but we decided to spend a couple nights out so we could be leisurely and have time for a ski of the Wy€™east face on our last day.  We figured a late morning start on day 1 would allow us to ski the west and north aspects later in the day and get softer snow, then after camping we could catch the east side of the mountain in the morning sun. 
 
We skinned out of Timberline and hit Illumination Saddle around noon. Coverage and snow conditions on the Reid Glacier were great.  Only had a couple crevasses starting to open up as we scooted through between Yocum Ridge and the glacier at around 8000ft then made a descending traverse to the broad lower Yocum Ridge at about 7500ft.   We had a short walk on dirt/scree over to the Sandy Glacier where we tried to hold a contour.   We might€™ve been a little low on this next section as we had to skin and boot back up a bit to get onto the Ladd Glacier.   From there it was a smooth shuffle across the Ladd and Coe glaciers.   A short, mostly snow bootpack got us to the Snowdome/Langille Glacier side of the mountain where we found a recently abandoned campsite so we made use of their snow platform and settled in for the rest of the day.   Not sure how easy it is to access the NW side of Hood, but wow there is some fun looking terrain around the Ladd and Glisan glaciers area €“ wish we would€™ve had more time to spend over there. 

The next morning we opted to get in a nice mellow ski down the Elliot to about 7000ft where we were able to squeak in a descending traverse onto Cooper Spur.   The skin back up the spur to 9000ft was punctuated with many breaks to watch the hardier souls climbing up and skiing down the Cooper Spur route.    From 9000ft we were able to rip skins and slide quickly around the east side of the mountain all the way to the base of the Wy€™east route.  Only had to scoot around a couple opening crevasses on the Newton Clark €“ the coverage is just really, really good on Hood right now.  It was only lunchtime but we€™d already arrived at our next camp.  Since the snow was well-cooked we spent a lazy afternoon reading and playing cards.

Around dinnertime we had a surprising gear malfunction €“ the two partially filled smaller cartridges we had been using with our jetboil ran dry so we moved on to using a new canister.  Either the threads on our jetboil stove are damaged or the new canister was defective but we couldn€™t get the fuel threaded on to the stove it just spun and spun and then popped off.  Fortunately it was warm enough that a trash bag solar still and nalgenes filled with snow on warm rocks provided ample water €“ we just had to suffer through eating a dinner of cold ramen noodles€¦bleck.

Sunday morning we were up at 5:30, and on the move by 6:30 €“ we left the camping gear behind and with light packs cramponed up the Wy€™east face €“ we were circumnavigating the mountain, but we needed some good fall-line turns too.  Corn-o-clock came fast and by the time we hit the top of the face at 9 the slope was ready to ski.   Although the face is currently marred with quite a bit of debris (looks like a skier triggered sluff run amok from days earlier) there was still ample smooth corn available.

We were back at camp in no time and after grabbing our tent we started down the White River glacier.   We should€™ve put the skins on and regained the south side up high but we figured we could use one of the several old ski tracks we saw that contoured west out of the valley lower down.   The eastern exposure mixed with the hot temps made the traverse out of the White River canyon pretty unpleasant, but we eventually popped up and over and had the home stretch down to the car. 

Given the dirty snow and soon to be patchy coverage between Wy'east and Timberline - climbing out of Mt.Hood Meadows is definitely the way to go right now for a better fall-line ski to your car.

After our ghetto cold ramen dinner, we were happy to stroll up the parking lot and fill our bellies at the all-you-can-eat lunch buffet at Timberline Lodge

more pictures here:
https://goo.gl/photos/uHTFEvW251QMD3Bt6


PS- big thanks to TAY€™er 'cascadekid€™ for his site that has so much good info on the circumnav:  http://mountainlessons.com/routes/mthoodskicircumnavigationroute


Looks super good. Coverage really is all-time for late May.  I'm glad that my beta was useful!

Given that the USGS quads for Mt.Hood show a far more glaciated mountain than we currently have, prior to doing this trip I kind of nerded out wanting to have some maps that would show just when exactly we were on crevassed terrain - I took the satellite images and USGS maps available side by side on Hillmap and made composite maps in photoshop all around the mountain.  If anyone would like to download them, they are available here:

https://goo.gl/photos/QRZsqQy1MrzXqe8HA


Looks like fun! I was in the group of 6 ahead of you by maybe 45 min on the Wy'east on Sunday morning. Conditions were great on Wy'east and Superbowl, and not bad all the way to the Meadows base by the time we got there, around 9:30 am. I think you may have met Randy climbing somewhere en route the previous day, he seemed to know you were circumnavigating. The Timberline buffet is a great cap to any big Hood trip!

thanks for the bootpack :)  we were a little disappointed when we saw that the fresh slide debris had likely wiped out the previous one... and then your crew swooped in and stomped in a new set of footsteps to use.


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may-26-28-2017-mt-hood-circumnavigation-wy-east-face
Pete A
2017-05-29 07:04:59