June 3, 2007, Mt Hood South Side

I was in Portland visiting my family and decided to get up on hood. I haven't climbed it in a few years. When I told my mother I was going to be going solo, she insisted that she come along to make sure I would be okay. She just hiked, but it was still nice to have the company at pit stops. I had only slept about 2 hours in the last 18 when the alarm went off at 2am. After about an hour of skinning though I remembered why I do this. The night was beautiful, a full moon and quite warm with no wind. The snow was really soft, didn't even get close to freezing during the night. I was able to skin all the way to the hogsback with no problems except when I had to cross the glissade gullys.

At the hogsback I ditched my skis and switched to crampons. Everyone was asscending the old chute as the pearly gates area looked quite icy and rocky, not to mention the bergschrund. There was a lot of recent ice and rock fall. One guide told me that all the runnels were new. After I went up I waited for a little while at the hogsback for my mother and then a little longer for the sun. There were a lot of people commenting on my skis, mostly "I wish I had a pair of skis right now," one guy said "youre insane" I just laugh when I get those comments.

I put the skis on just below the schrund and then skied the southwest slope after crater rock towards zig zag canyon. I have never skied in that area and it was quite a lot of fun. I saw a couple others skinning in the area, but no one that looked like they were going very far up with their skis. After traversing over I jumped on the groomers back to the car, tried to get the lift op at palmer to let me get a ride up, but he wasn't having it, Oh well.