January 1, 2019, Mt. Hood

Been a while for me posting, climbing, or skiing. So good to get out. Mt. Hood early season often plagued with coral reefs of chicken heads and other icy monstrosities.. Was hopeful with significant snow it would be in ok shape but on the way up it was pretty bad, I wondered why carrying my skis from top of palmer on up, I have done this before with my partner's optimism to find 500-1000ft of luscious untracked pow up high, only to be foiled and suffer the indignity of walking down with skis on my back to the lifts.

This time we found from about Crater Rock elevation up nicely filled with lots of wind deposition snow from westerly storm. Skied the old chute in relatively nice snow, until it got a little chunky and slabby, with some dust on crust down west crater way to illumination saddle. Took off skis for about 400 yards before donning again from illumination saddle after a few beers. If we didn't want to go to saddle probably could have picked a line down to lifts through the wind-filled areas and the ice.