TR: Mt. Hood, Wy'East Face

[EastCoaster]

Soooo EastCoaster might have moved to Portland (guess I'm going to need a new handle or something...). Got a new job working for a wind power company, made the move a couple weeks ago- was going to put up a move TR, but it just got put on the backburner. Here are the pics, but I'll warn you that they are boring.



First weekend out here we went on a beautiful hike with lots of waterfalls, pictures here



Second weekend here? There's still snow on Mt Hood...what's 5,000 vert the weekend before 4th of July?



I was sitting in the office Friday when someone I didn’t know tried to talk my coworker Dave into going on a ski trip this weekend. Dave didnt sound too stoked on giving up his weekend to ski, and was itching to go mtn biking now that the trails were melting out.



Enter Rob.



“Uh, you don’t know me, but I would be down to go skiing this weekend.” Rob, meet Jason, mechanical engineer and skier. Excellent!



Yesterday afternoon we left Portland around 2:45 and pulled into Mt. Hood Meadows parking lot (or close to- you have to park outside the closed gates) and started skinning up the melting resort trails. The face you see is actually the one we were going to ski the next day:





We got above the resort and the views really started to open up. Jason with Mt. Jefferson behind him:





The near peak is Mt. Jefferson, the far peaks are the Three Sisters





The parking lot start was around 4,500 ft, and we skinned to around 7,800 ft before we stopped for the night. Home sweet home:





The views from our camp were nothing short of spectacular. Jason looking up at Hood with the sun setting in the background:









Panorama-ish:





The sunset was awesome:









I thought the shadow of Hood extending all the way into the plains was pretty cool:





It was a pretty chilly night. Woke up at 1:30 to a sky insanely full of stars, and at 4:30 to this:





We started packing up and moving around 5:45. The face we had to climb (and then ski):





The ice hoodoos at the top of Hood are really cool:









Pretty icy skinning to start:





We had to skirt around this crevasse (or maybe a giant glide crack), and make sure not to ski into it:





Jason climbing:





With around 1,000 ft to go we had to switch to crampons and boot to the top. When I took this picture it was getting a little painful:





I think we made the top of the face (around 10,100 ft) sometime between 9-9:30. The peak of the mountain is very cool looking:









Find the climbers:





Climbing up isn’t the fun part (though it kind of is in a masochistic way). This is the fun part:









Perfect spring corn for most of the way down, about 3,000 vertical ft worth:









A view of what we had just skied from inside the boundaries of Meadows. The scale is very deceiving- you are looking at something like 3-4,000 ft of skiing:





One last look at Hood from the parking lot before we drive away:





Not too bad for June...I think I'm going to like it here.

[skiing rules]

well the transplant pulls through with another insanely good TR. looks like fun. That skinner looked pretty firm, still nothing compared to that flagstaff skinner... Beautiful pics in there, btw.

[skipink]

Insanely gorgeous.

[Zeus]

Wow. Just wow.

[RMacSki]

amazing. I wish i had a sense of how tiring it is to skin up mountains. Closest i've come to vert hiking is the chimney tops in the smokys.

[davidski]

Congrats on your move. Excellent TR-- of course



So can we expect reports on some of those other peaks in the future?



I guess come winter Mt. Hood will be your inbound destination -- what are the accessible single day BC options?

[Ski Bunny]

Beautiful pics!

[KneeDeep]

Ha... getting after it already. I think you'll like it out there.



I look forward to the TR's coming out of the PNW now. SkiNC has all the big western ski areas covered now with UT, PNW, and CO all representing.

[skiing rules]

I just looked at the pics again, talk about not a cloud in the sky! Looks like a truly incredible place up there

[Tmiller72]

Incredible TR! I'd love to do something like that.