The uphill grind

Timberline Lodge, Oregon. Monday, May 13, 2024

As detailed in the previous pages, today is the fourth of five legs to climb Mt. Hood. The first was from Portland to Sandy at 1000 feet. The second from Sandy to Government Camp at 4000 feet. The third from Government Camp to Timberline Lodge at 6000 feet. I have hired a private guide, Laura Berger, for the final summit push on Wednesday. You take a snowcat to the top of the ski lift at 8500 feet, starting at 2 AM. With luck, I’ll be at the summit around 7:30.

Because of my insistence on climbing this mountain from the sea*, I feel the need to do the snowcat leg on foot. I had Jane mail me my snowshoes. Yesterday‘s dry run suggested I could make it up the 2500 feet in four hours. In fact, it took five. You follow a “climber’s trail” that skirts the right edge of the ski slope, just beyond the ski boundary, but it is typically broken up with snowcat tracks that make the going challenging. I had checked in at the guide office, they didn’t think I really needed snowshoes for this leg, but the snow was pretty soft in places, and I saw a fair amount of post-holing, I’m glad I brought them.

I had a sumptuous breakfast at Timberline Lodge to get me going. It’s really an amazing building, considering it was built as a New Deal project to get us out of the depression. Here is the main lobby, the sign at the bottom has some interesting statistics.

Parked outside was one of the behemoths I’ll be taking on Wednesday morning.

Had a nice long call with sister Anne as I trudged up, she couldn’t hear me very well because of the wind noise, but I could hear her fine, and she filled me in all about the family. My niece Martha is getting her PhD in linguistics from Berkeley today, she’ll be getting her hood while I’m climbing Hood! An interesting cirrus cloud formation developed around the mountain, and I texted Anne this picture.

Encountered two women, a guide and her client, coming down the mountain, they said it was fine up there, they summited at 9 AM, the snow was in good shape so she didn’t think they had to summit earlier than that. Encouraging.

Skiers and snowboarders would occasionally veer across the track, but the lifts closed at 3 PM. Just after, a ski patrol guy stopped by and said that if I needed a rescue after that, I would have a long wait. Geez, did I look that pathetic?

It wasn’t clear where I was actually headed. The guys in the guide office said just go to where the snowcat tracks stopped, roughly even with the top of the ski lift. Up that high, the wind had obscured most of the tracks. A low moraine blocked my view of the lift, but I believed I was even with it. I went up to the last of the ski boundary signs, my Apple Watch said I’d climbed 2,485 feet, so I called it good. Overall altitude almost 8,500 feet, I hadn’t been this high in quite a while. Maybe that’s why I was breathing so hard.

Coming down took longer than I hoped, I hadn’t used my snowshoes much recently, and it felt pretty precarious, negotiating the steep slope. I didn’t want to slip or twist an ankle, alone up here. A couple of times I sat down and just glissaded down the hill, but that’s easier to do with snow pants on, and without snowshoes. Sometimes I felt like a baby, butt-scooching across the floor, sometimes I got an icy wedgy. Charming.

Even this late in the day, I encountered a number of backcountry skiers skinning their way up the slope, one couple had funny looking skis, which turned out to be split snowboards. Interesting.

Halfway down, the broken snowcat-tracked trail turned into smooth corduroy. I was so touched. This was outside the ski area boundary, so some kind-hearted groomer must have spotted my predicament and smoothed the trail for me. And I wasn’t even a paying customer. Or maybe it wasn’t all about me. It made all the difference, suddenly I could skim along in smooth, gliding strides.

All told, it took three hours to come down, I limped into the parking lot at 6:30. My pants were soaked, but amazingly, my feet were dry. I guess my combination of Gore-Tex trail runners, waterproof, socks, and gaiters actually worked (I will be renting mountaineering boots for the climb). Noticed my balance was quite a bit better by the end, maybe this trip was therapeutic after all.

No question about it, there was no way I could have done this and the summit climb on the same day. Once again, dependent on fossil fuel. But in my convoluted way, I can also say I climbed it on foot.

Back at the motel, I made a disturbing discovery. I had been reapplying sunscreen regularly, but my forehead was scorched.

I don’t usually like to apply sunscreen there, it’s covered by the brim of my hat anyway, and when you sweat, it gets in your eyes. But I’d forgotten, on a snow slope, the sun is reflected back up at you. I now recalled on Denali, when you were gasping for air constantly, the roof of your mouth got sunburned.

Tomorrow will be a low-key day, I will meet with Laura at 10, she’ll check my equipment, and we’ll review ice climbing techniques for a few hours. Need to get to bed early, for the 1:45 AM start the next day. No blogging for tomorrow.

Snowshoed 9 miles, 650 total. Time 8 hours. Elevation gain 2,485 feet

©️ 2024 Scott Luria

• actually the first leg of this trip was the two weeks I took getting from the ocean at Bellingham to Portland.