Way, way back in 2013, I took another trip with Brian and Golden climbing crew (but without my cousin this time) up Mt Hood. We did a one day trip - which is pretty reasonable for this mountain. I met up with them in Seattle and we drove down to Oregon and camped out at the foot of the mountain - taking off early the following morning for the summit.
2013-07-06
Mt Hood has a very interesting approach. You start off pretty high on the mountain at the Mt Hood ski area parking lot. From there, you hike up just to the right of the ski area, climb up and around a few rock outcroppings and small ridges, and then it’s on to a very steep (40ish deg) climb up through an area called the Old Chute and Pearly Gates.
This turned out to be pretty easy for this crew. I was clearly the weakest link in this group - these two guys are beasts. We passed several climbing groups on the way up and I think we must have climbed the whole mountain in just 4-5 hours. You will notice that this post is sparse on photos - it was all I could do just to keep up!
Once you pass through that final steep section, there’s a small ridge that takes you to the summit. The ridge is right above some sulfur vents (which are common on most PNW volcanoes), but because of the way the ridge was sloped, the smell is really potent here…
Once we were through the ridge, we were at the summit. I spent a few min catching my breath before we grabbed some photos and I pulled out the three Rainiers I brought with me - a novel idea for Brian/Golden. We had a good old time on the summit for a few min, laughing and carrying on, while we watched the crews we passed roll up onto the summit with us.
We didn’t bring skis with us on this trip (something I remembered to do on my next trip up Mt Hood), but the ski area is the perfect slope for some awesome glissading - We sat down, rigged up our ice axes, and off we went. We were off the mountain in no more than an hour.
' It was a short trip, but no less fun. On to the next one!
