| Summary | None |
| Owner | MITOC Gallery Administrator |
| Creation Date | 2012-06-20 22:19:41 UTC-0400 |
| Description | Eric Gilbertson
June 10, 2012 2:00am to 11:00am I flew out to Oregon for the weekend for the annual State Highpointers Convention and had just enough time for a climb up Mount Hood too. I got into Portland Friday night and immediately drove up towards Timberline Lodge at the base of Mount Hood. It actually started to snow on me while I was driving. That’s pretty uncommon even in Oregon in June, and the locals were jokingl referring to the month as “Junuary.” I hadn’t actually found a partner yet to climb Mount Hood, but at the Highpointers Convention Saturday I met a bunch of other climbers who were planning to summit Sunday and they said I’d be free to tag along. They were planning to take snow-cats up from Timberline lodge to the top of the ski-lifts to start their climb, but I decided to hike up and meet them once they got dropped off. I slept in my car in the Timberline Lodge parking lot for a few hours before getting up at 2am to start the climb. I probably should have left a little earlier, because I didn’t get to the top of the ski lifts until 3:40am (a little behind schedule), and had to race up to catch up with the highpointers group. We were all hiking together as a group of 12 by 4am. We saw a bunch of other groups coming down just before we got to the crevassed area, and one guide said he was worried that once the sun hit the route the snow might become unstable and he didn’t think his group could get up and down quickly enough to beat the sun. We stopped there at the base of the crevasses to assess the situation. By then it was starting to get pretty cold and windy. Eight people in the group decided to turn around, while I and three others decided to rope up and continue climbing. We got to the base of the bergschrund and met another solo climber, Paolo from Italy. We decided it would be best if Paolo and I continued on roped together while the others descended back down. Paolo and I raced up around the right side of the bergschrund, through the icy Pearly Gates, and reached the roof of Oregon by 8am. The view was spectacular, with Rainier and Baker to the north and Jefferson and the Sisters to the south. We traversed the entire ridge to be certain we’d tagged the true summit, and then turned back down. We got back below the bergschrund still well before the sun would start hitting the snow, and then made the easy descent back down to Timberline Lodge. I think we may have actually been some of the only ones to summit that day, out of several hundred people attempting Mt Hood. On the way back to Portland I had enough time to swing by Smith Rock, Crater Lake National Park, and drive up the Pacific Coast to round out a fun weekend in Oregon. |