April 28, 2007, Reid Glacier and South Side, Mt. Hood

We left the car at 3:10am (late!) and skinned up to the top of the Palmer lift before heading over to Illumination Saddle.  Dozens of people already heading up the South Side!  We got passed by a quick party heading for Leuthold Couloir, and found two other parties roping up for it.  We ripped the skins then skied about 2000' down the Reid Glacier by traversing towards Leutholds then down the northern edge of the glacier.  The snow was firm with few exposed crevasses, but already ice was flying down the mountain from above.  We crossed below Yocum Ridge at around 7400', packed up the skis, and roped up for the Sandy Glacier.  From then on it was a soft, unpleasant postholing for 4000' up the glacier and headwall.  There was one party on route ahead of us, and we were able to use their steps for a while, but we could still only manage 500'/hr!  Copious amounts of ice falling throughout the day - I got hit in the hands alone by golf ball size chunks 7 times!  Ouch...good day for the brain bucket!  A bit of ice in the Hourglass, always fun to climb that in tele boots  :D 

We summited after 12.5 hrs and then finally got to slap the boards back on again for a 5K'+ descent of the South Side.  Scores of ski tracks and bootpacks abounded all over the place.  It looked like a ski area beat hard!  At this hour the snow above Crater Rock was awful, soft, sloughy garbage, but below Crater Rock down to the bottom of Palmer it was actually pretty silky and nice!  Still able to ski back to the car, but the bottom 1000' or so was grabby wet slop.