On June 15th, I summited Mt. Hood with a good friend of mine. He had been up twice before, and signed up for the trip just to accompany me, which was very kind. We climbed with Portland Parks & Recreation, which provided excellent guides at a very reasonable cost. They don't advertise their trips and I'd never heard of them before. This is the mountain from Timberline Lodge.

On Saturday we trained in the snow in our unfamiliar equipment. For the first time, I used crampons:

And an ice axe:

We practiced maintaining two points of contact with the mountain at all times: step, step, place ice axe, step, step, etc.

We ate a big meal and retreated to the lodge at about 5pm. We were supposed to sleep for a few hours and then get up around 10pm. I couldn't sleep, but with my eye mask and ear plugs I managed to rest for a few hours. I was pretty tired even just from the training. I thought about Bonnie and basked a while. Eventually I couldn't stay in bed any longer and I got up and read. Everyone woke up at 10:15pm, we put on our gear (lots of gear!), and we headed towards the mountain. We started our climb just after midnight from the top of Palmer, which is about 8000'. In the next few hours we would climb another 3000'.

I don't have any pictures of the nighttime climb, but it was beautiful. There was a waxing moon, and we turned off our headlamps and climbed by the silverly light. The Milky Way was clearly visible, and the Big Dipper was stunningly bright.

Just before sunrise, we reached the summit. We were the first ones up. Here is Paul, rocking out:

This is towards the northwest, showing Mt. Rainier (left) and Mt. Adams. I could see eight snow-covered mountains. Notice the wind-swept rime ice on top.

Sunrise

Summit Ridge

I'm tired but elated, and I call Bonnie on my cellphone. I'm also very cold up there. I was wearing the right clothing to be comfortable while moving, but when stopped, the wind was chilly and in fact froze my camelbak!

As the sun rose, the shadow of the mountain appeared. I'd never seen anything like it.

Our guides discuss the route down the mountain. There are over 200 climbers behind us and we're having traffic-jam problems on the main corridor.

We decide to traverse Summit Ridge and go down a less-used (steeper!) face. Here's Paul, leading the way. The ridge dropped off sharply on either side. Not too steep, you think? Look at this second picture!

We descend back into the darkness. This part of the climb was frustrating and difficult, as we we on a tight belay (roped-in) and the person behind me was not moving correctly or smoothly. It made for a jerky, steep climb which was exhausting and hurt my back as I paused repeatedly in bent-over positions. Imagine a very steep slope, and instead of like a ski or a snowboard where you want to catch the edge, our feet were perpendicular to the mountain so that we had all the points of our crampons in the ice. This provided the best purchase. But of course our bodies were bent back up so that we didn't fall over. All that plus the tight rope jerking up and down was awkward.

Here's Paul, leading again. It's not clear how steep this is, but compare the slope to the area under the mountain. And look at that incredible shadow!

This is what it looks like going up. You can see a bunch of climbers ascending.

I didn't know there were huge sulfur vents on the mountain, spewing their overpowering smell.

Finally, we reach the bottom of the mountain at about 9am on Sunday, feeling discombobulated and confused, but satisfied. (9am? What day is it? Is it really AM?) I am sunburnt and my knees hurt from the long descent. I took one final picture of myself and didn't notice the ugly car behind me :)