Second Attempt on Mt Hood August 24 2010

After our unsuccessful attempt at summiting Mt Hood on August 23, we had a few days of rest before going to pick up Matt’s brother in Law (Jimmy) at the airport in Seattle. However, in the afternoon of August 24, I started wondering if we could summit Mt Hood before going to Seattle, so I approached Matt with this proposal. Let’s go to bed early, get up by 9 pm and start the ascent by 10 pm. We could summit by 5 am and be back in Hood River in time to pack up and head out to Seattle to pick up Jimmy.

Not surprisingly, Matt the Machine was up for this challenge. So we found ourselves at the Timberline lodge at 10:15 pm and started tracing our steps back to the Hogsback. We stayed away from the moraine and reached the base of the Hogsback by 2:30 am. This time, we headed left of the crevasse toward the ‘Old Chute route’ instead of going right (pearly gates) as we did the day before. There are not many interesting images to show because we did this during the night.

However, you have to imagine a steep snow field (60-70% incline). There were many sun cups, so every few arduous step, we could rest on somewhat level surfaces. The only real exciting time was when a very large rock the size of a car tumbled past us to our left (but not too close for comfort) during our ascent. We stayed away from the obvious rock fall areas on either the right or left of us as a way to minimize objective risk.

Before we knew it, we were on the summit ridge which we followed to the true summit.
As planned, we were there around 5 am. It was windy and cold so we did not stay around too long. After all, the climb was only half way done.

We roped up for the descent, since the exposure going down the ‘old chute’ route appeared greater than when going up. It is often easier to go up than to go down. We tag teamed it with one of us going down while the other placed a quick ice axe anchor. Then, the other one would climb down pass the other climber. We repeated this until we reached the Hogsback.

The descent was pretty uneventful. However, we timed it perfectly, because the entire universe was aligned for us by the time we got back to the Hogsback. The rising sun on the other side of Mt Hood caused a pyramidal shadow to the west of us and the moon hung perfectly perpendicular to it. It was a fantastic sight. We stayed there to take in the view until both the shadow and the moon moved apart. I will never forget this moment we happen to catch.

As we continued our descent, we crossed a couple of climbers coming up the Hogsback. Of all places, Shawn (yellow helmet) turned out to be from Ridgeland Mississippi and he has a daughter going to Olemiss. What a small wonderful world. We might get together on September 25th. We also caught up with the moon stuck in crater rock. You might notice the fumes on the right escaping from one of the volcano vents. It smelled like Hades around there.

We made it to the bottom of the mountain in good form. Mt Hood appeared so majestic behind us as we were driving back to Hood River that we had to stop and take in this beautiful sight.

In summary, here is the route we traveled up Mt Hood using the coordinate from my GPS (blue line) overlaid on a google earth map. All in all, it was such a wonderful adventure and we were so glad to have conquered this mountain.

We also made it to Seatac Airport to pick up Jimmy, so timing could not have been more perfect.
Next, I will send you something a little more involved regarding our climb of Mt Rainier. Lots more excitement to come.