Climbing Mount Hood

Climbing Mount Hood

As I may have mentioned, whenever I remember doing something foolhardy, I recall that Gowdy was involved, urging me along a steep snowfield using day old  ice axe holes, scrambling up a ridge of rotten rock on the west side of Mt Washington, sharing a jug old Old Mr Cribari rotgut red…there we were.

So when he took an art class from Foster and decided that his project would be filming climbs of the major Oregon peaks there I was, carrying a rope, belaying him and Brad up a pitch, whatever I could do.  Except for turning back near the top of Mt Jefferson, steep sloppy sliding snow proving too much for us, we had only Mt Hood left.

Brad was at this time an experience snow and ice climber.  He had spent time in Alaska as a volunteer in Mountain Rescue, and had climbed Mt Blanc, so we deferred to his expertise when he suggested we do the “sunshine” route, up the Eliot glacier above Cloud Cap.

We had become rather expansive in choosing our climbing partners, and this trip included, besides the three of us, Steve and Nita Grace, and Dick Lacoma, a Phi Psi, a Potter, a wrestler, a nice guy, but never in his life a mountain climber.  There might have been more but I forget.

We spent the night by the stone building above the Mt Hood Trail, and set out in the early predawn darkness.  

It turned out that we were too late in the year, and as we moved slowly up the glacier we kept turning to avoid chasms and crevasses in the snow.  As the sun came up we reassessed our options.  The glacier was more than we could handle.  Finally we decided to try the lateral moraine on our right as we looked up.

It was steep, and, being a moraine, merely a loosely compacted ridge of sand and gravel.  It got steeper.

Every step released an avalanche on the climber below.  Every movement was tentative, testing the stability of our foot placement, gently placing our ice axes for balance.

At one point we were on a thin snowfield, vertical, high up the NE side of Mt Hood, with, no doubt, a great view, to which no one paid any attention.  I became aware of a mumbling, and realized that Nita Grace, the lapsed Catholic, was reciting “Hail Mary…” under her breath.  Dick was wide eyed.  Brad was leading, I followed, hacking footsteps for the rest with my axe. We angled up the slope, right for a few steps, left for a while.  The rope stuck on a rock below Brad as he crossed the slope above me.  I gently tugged on the rope; Brad nearly fell. There was no room for a mistake. We watched the rock tumble amongst us, and all started breathing again.  The only sounds were muted “Fuck fuck shit…”

We crept on; retreating was no option.  Snow melted, constantly loosening rocks, which fell around us, tumbling down the slope below us.

My eyes were blind with sweat, I was concentrating on the step above me, I don’t know how but we got off the snow field.  A ridge of rotten rock stretched above us.

We had no choice but go on up.

It turned out the worst was behind us.  No less dangerous, but with care and caution we finally got to the top of Mt Hood.

Was it sweat, or tears of relief that blurred our vision? We collapsed and drank our water and ate our snacks and finally enjoyed the view.  For the first time that day Jim took out his movie camera.

No one even considered descending the way we had come.  We decided to descend to Timberline Lodge and a couple of us hitchhike back to Cloud Cap.

Heading down, Jim and I were feeling frisky so we began glissading, using our ice axes as drag and rudder, speeding down the snow past a long line of climbers coming up from Timberline, happy hikers out for the day.  

Suddenly they all began screaming at us  “crevasse!” So we stopped, shortly before speeding to our doom down a cliff.

Just another foolhardy move that we survived.

Several years later I was talking to Dick, and he still felt that that climb was the most dangerous moment of his life.

Nick