TR: June 28 - July 2, Adams & Hood

[Jonathan S.]

TR: June 28 - July 2, Adams & Hood

Looking for impressive feats on challenging routes?

Good, then read the accounts from Andy and Jason.

By contrast, questionable wx fx plus travel logistics prevented planning any long routes and/or offbeat locales for us (plus we lack the skills and fitness of those guys anyway).

But my partner did take some nice pictures, and I got lucky with a few from my phone, amidst some nice scenery . . . which sometimes we could actually see!

Here’s a preview from the flight into PDX Wednesday evening:






And the key trip stats:
5 days skied
41 Gu packets consumed
8.2 Gu packets per day (plus 2 or 3 Odwalla bars too)
29,477 cumulative vertical ascended
27,257 cumulative vertical skied
92.5% fun-o-meter ratio factor
719 vertical feet per Gu
5528 miles flown
876 miles driven
52.4 miles hiked/skinned/climbed/skied
122.3 ratio of mechanized:self-propelled miles

[Jonathan S.]

June 28 (Thursday): Adams- South Climb & Morrison Creek


Thursday wx fx looked good, but Friday was questionable, and I flew into PDX late Wednesday night.
So with those constraints, we planned a typical Adams SW chutes trip.

The snowdrifts were impassable past Morrison Creek (although now the road is passable pretty much the entire way), but although that deterred most skiers back then, the vertical and distance added are both relatively small, especially since we were able to ski to within ~200' vertical and half a mile of the car.
Plus the route back from the SW Chutes to Morrison Creek is far more direct than hiking the RMT back to Cold Springs – well, if you can get to the SW Chutes in the first place...

Driving toward the mountain, the usual Lemurian spacecraft was hovering above the mountain (cleverly disguised as always as a lenticular cloud):






Visibility was good while ascending via the winter route, but once we joined the standard South Climb route, the cloud descended upon us:






(Trip reports from that same day on Rainier described exactly the same sequence of weather conditions.)

Only a couple hundred or so vertical feet from the entrance to the SW Chutes, we decided that we’d had enough of the combination of very high winds, visibility of only several feet, and absolutely zero contrast (which would have stopped us far earlier had we not been so familiar with the terrain from so many prior trips).

Picture(s)? Just put your own camera right up against a white wall and you’ll have the same effect.

After a couple thousand vertical of cautious descending-on-skis, we emerged out of the cloud at around Lunch Counter to enjoy some nice skiing (especially to the west of the Crescent [not-really-a] Glacier on a beautiful lightly treed snowfield that I’d never noticed previously, and unfortunately neglected to photograph).
The conditions in this picture might not look like much, but the psychological relief here was so great that it felt like brilliant sunshine:
(I mean, you can even differentiate the snow from the sky! What more can you ask for...?)

[Jonathan S.]

June 29 (Friday): Hood- MHM & Heather Canyon

With a questionable weather forecast, we started from out favorite rustic trailhead:






The long off-snow approach was brutal:






The skin up through the resort was blessedly brief as always (given MHM’s inflated vert stat), although some of the infrastructure is fun:






After a quick rain shower that made us appreciate the dry wx for the rest of the outing, we dropped into Heather Canyon, which although part of the resort, always feels like legitimate backcountry post-season. We then skinned back up Heather toward Superbowl, with the goal of getting as high as possible until the wx started to threaten:






Unfortunately though, once we reached the bench separating the two, I saw a couple rocks tumbling down in the distance. Evidence of past rock fall is one thing, but active rock fall, no thanks!
(I would have thought that the rock fall would be more likely on hot sunny days, but perhaps Superbowl had strong winds up high? Down in Heather, we never saw anything moving, despite all the evidence of past rock fall.):

Here’s looking up at Superbowl – time for those skins to come off ... :






... and time to ski down:






Skinning up for another lap, our tracks from the initial descent into Heather stood out against the dirty snow (which still skied fine):






We then skinned back up Heather to rejoin the main part of the resort, with our four sets of tracks in the distance:

[Jonathan S.]

June 30 (Saturday): Hood- Timberline/Palmer

The wx fx shifted from dire to sufferable, but we didn’t want to suffer too much, so a Triple R outing: Rain, Rest, Recovery, all via a very quick Timberline/Palmer outing.
My ski partner’s girlfriend joined us for a TLT5 trio:






With a wet parking lot like this, you just know that the day is going to be . . . MORE FUNNER!:






Another day, another long brutal off-snow approach (with my ski partner’s girlfriend calling us “twinsies”):






The rain stopped for our ascent, although visibility on the Palmer was nil. Fortunately this had also shut down the lift early for the day, so the snowfield was ours, all ours:





More skiing by braille:






At the top of the Magic Mile, we could finally see:





Thus encouraged, we skied all the way down to the base and reskinned . . . upon which the rain immediately started up again.

Fortunately the rain soon stopped, and light winds had dried us off by the time we reached the Palmer mid-station . . . which seems as good a spot as any to say Kaddish on my father’s yartzeit (during which I had mistakenly scheduled this trip before checking the date, thrown off two weeks by the ancient lunar calendar):






The skiing-by-braille that ensued reminded me of how much my father disliked skiing in poor visibility, which also reminded me that a more fitting memorial would be consuming a big pastrami sandwich in the ski lodge ... but unfortunately it was closed by then, plus I doubt their pastrami would have met his standards anyway.

[Jonathan S.]

July 1 (Sunday): Hood- Timberline / Palmer / Crater Rock

Another day, another questionable wx fx, so another Triple R outing.
All the lifts were still running, but all the racers were gone, and almost all the jibonkers too.
I started off skinning in a misty cloud, but then . . . surprise:






I would have loved to skin up to Hogsback, but having anticipated just a rainy Palmer outing, I was sans ski crampons, self-arrest ski pole, helmet, and partner, so I turned around at the southern base of Crater Rock . . . which still provided a nice little lesson in always keeping up your guard even if you’ve been to the same place many times before, and are surrounded by many boot tracks:






The corn up high was overripe by this time of day, but the skiing was still nice, plus I always love how the Palmer, which seems to large when you’re on it, seems so small from up high:






Rejoining the Palmer, the deserted race lines skied very nicely, until about halfway down the Mile the snow became sticky.
Skinning back up for another lap, without having to watch for errant jibonkers, I took in more of the scenery, including . . . whoah, East Coast representing:





With the sun traversing over the other side of the Palmer, I suspect the main race lines would be freezing up now, so I checked out the far western lane at the boundary, with bonus view of the undercast:






On the lower mountain, with late-afternoon grooming already in progress, I faced an ethical challenge (with predicable results):

[Jonathan S.]

July 2 (Monday): Hood- Eliot & Snowdome


Finally, on the final day, an absolutely perfect weather forecast – but we were starting that morning from Portland, and I was flying back home that evening. So just a quick outing to Snowdome – except the road to Cloud Cap was still not open, so not quite so quick...

After a ~1900' vertical dry hike to Tilly Jane, followed by skinning up along moderate gullies and an open ridgeline snowfield, we crossed a kitty litter moraine and finally roped up to ascend the lower Eliot Glacier and then cut across to Snowdome:














Looking up at my partner above me on Snowdome:






And my partner looking down at me on Snowdome:






The critical Gu at the transition:






At long last, time to ski:






My partner took many pictures of me while skiing. This would be great if it provided more of a sense of the terrain:





Now this is more like it:







After a kitty litter exit from the glacier:






. . . we skied down the beautiful snowfield on the flat open ridge, then into the forest down the moderate gully we had skinned up earlier. But where would the snow end? Since we had continued hiking a bit more on the ascent to ensure that the snow was continuous, we weren’t quite sure how far we could ski. So we kept going, until to our surprise and delight we skied straight into:






. . . the center stage of the campground amphitheater! An absolutely perfect setting for the final turns of the trip, plus benches galore for our transition.


And finally, the downhike amidst a combination of green forestry, grayed-out forest fire remains, plus all our colorful ski gear of course:

[Jonathan S.]

July 3 (Tuesday): Back Home

After a redeye flight followed by three-and-a-half hours of quality time for a layover in an obscure subterranean part of the Newark airport, I returned home to discover that our toddler daughter has been progressing with her Gu training:






I also discovered a clear lack of any snow, but, hmm, if I buy some more of these packets that more Portland friends gave me:

[skier666]

Very nice!

Somebody should tell those green skis to stop photobombing your pics

[whyturn]

PDxin i t

[MadPatSki]

Nice...

And I thought all the tracks at Sunrise on Rainier that I found on July 2 were from your party due to weather issues and easy short shots.

[Jonathan S.]

Sunrise was indeed under strong consideration for exactly those reasons.
Unfortunately though, long drive from Portland, and my friend wanted only daytrips then (for unrelated reasons).

[Vets]

Very impressive!

[buckethead]

nice jonathan.
great to see the EC representing on the july snowpack!





...and glad to see you overcame any ethical misgivings and poached that corderoy! you earned it

[Sirshredalot]

Nice TR! Way to get after it.

[linds-o-rama]

Dear god! Sorry about the weather. At least you got to the north side of Hood... that is my happy place! Way to make the most of your trip, your stats are impressive!

[MMP]

Son of Pinhead 2 is of to Hood Camp and Smith Rocks for a week of skiing and then a week of rock climbing on July 21st. Thanks for the opportunity to look around.

[Natedogg]

Good stuff.

[hutash]

Great TR!!!

I love these summer sessions. Makes long for snow. I got to touch one tiny patch of snow climbing Mt Langley (the southern Sierra is totally melted out ).

[MadPatSki]

Great TR!!!

I love these summer sessions. Makes long for snow. I got to touch one tiny patch of snow climbing Mt Langley (the southern Sierra is totally melted out ).

Maybe we could buy a box of "Snow in Seconds" packs and make some August turns out of it.

[Jonathan S.]

And now for the sequel.