Getting High in the Cascades

Ski Mountaineering Mt Hood and Mt Rainier

Like many good adventures, this one starts out with some objectives in mind, and ends with something completely different. Skyler, Ran and I were planning to climb as many Cascade volcanoes as we could in 5 days. Our trip was inspired by knowledge of Mike Duncan et al. who were planning to climb Mt. Hood and maybe some others. For means, we chose ski mountaineering and for ends, we decided on Oregon's Mt. Hood (3428m) and Mt. St Helens (2549m) as well as Mt Adams (3743m) in Washington.


We left Vancouver Friday morning around 6am heading down towards Portland, by the afternoon, we arrived the Mt Hood Ranger Station in Zigzag, 20km East of Sandy, to get information. We were informed that a snow storm was taking over the region. That evening, we pulled in Camp Creek campsite to stay for the night, or maybe two or three nights awaiting for a good weather window.

It rained pretty hard through the night. Waking up Sat morning soggy, we decided to yo-yo skiing Mount Hood from Timberline Lodge. After got some coffee in Government Camp and heard that Hood is still in full-on mid Winter condition with 2 feet new snow, we were pretty stoked for the condition.

Arriving at the 'Climber's Cave' - which is a sheltered corridor with map and info for climbers of Hood - We soon put on ski outfit and headed out to find this snowcat trail leading towards top of the chairlift, so we know where to start in the dark the morning of the ascend day. It turned out, 40-60kmh wind with ice pallet scouring my face and merely 5 meters of visibility really not good enough for yoyoing. A snowcat sneak up on us within 10 meters and started to beep, when you turn your head around to see this giant machine with bright and mean headlights poking out of whiteout so close to you, really scary.

Skiing down and slalom around the trail marking poles was fun. We spoke to some Arc'teryx wearing local guide, he told us the cloud sometimes clears up at higher and recommended us to give it a try the day after as it would be the best weather window of the week. We agreed.

We hit the sack early to plan a early rise. After cold breakfast we drove up Timberline and hit the trail one hour after we woke up. A little windy but the clouds are deceasing as we climb higher. Just a little more than an hour and half we got about the same elevation as the top of the chairlift, the moon was high and bright, we turned off our headlamp and kept moving to stay warm. We left skis at an icy slope just before gaining to the Crater Rock, put crampons on. Wind was still gusting to around 40k which isn't bad, it was just cold and so dry that my nostril hurts inhaling air. My hands went from cold to numb then hot and burning pain, my camera battery went from full bar to 1/6 and blink. wouldn't auto focus or take photos.

As the sun was rising we got stoked to see the rim ice covered summit ridge. the shadow Mount Hood cast in the sea of cloud afar truly signatures the Cascade Volcano experience.

After passing a large guided group at Crater Rock, we soon picked on a variation of an Old Crater chut next to the Pearly Gate, as it has been congested by rime ice and not climbable.

We reached summit after boot packing up a 45deg slope with fresh snows. not technical but exhausting. fooled around on the summit ridge in high gust wind but warm in the sun.

Skied down to the Timberline Lodge by noon and napped by the fire pit while drying out our gear. Later we drove out for a treat at Rendezvous in Zigzag for a glass of Ice Axe Pale Ale from Mt Hood Brewery.

The next day, we drove into Portland for information and had picnic in a street park near water front. The sun came out, we exploded out our damp gear to let dry out - it had been a few days soggy camp to wait for a good weather! Considering the weather around Mt St Helens and Adams. We were looking at Mt Rainer for a better weather.



Mount Rainier

Tuesday, after getting food and fueled up, we drove up to Paradise Lodge, spoke to the rangers to get update condition for Muir and Rainier Summit. We saw a posted weather information in the ranger station, the table indicates such data: "avg smt temp, wind, etc." in tabular format, on the row "May 3rd", the cell shows "0 deg", "40". We were like "Oh that's pretty mild up there!" but until the ranger asked, "you guys from Canada aren't you?" We suddenly realized it was 0°F and 40mph, and asked ranger to look up what it is in Metric, it was -19°C and 64km/h, so wind chill, if you care, it would be -34°C, frostbite in less than 10 min.

It was classic to experience that dead silence in the trio for that awkward moment of 3 seconds. We drove up to the 24 hr use washroom, which has a corridor to shelter storm. This time of the year is shoulder season and not very many people up there. In the next 4 hours afternoon, we ran into four rangers and a couple of guides doing 'Denali' training with their clients up at Panorama Ridge, total of 20 people only 1 woman came in to use woman's washroom.

So I set up my bed inside the woman's washroom since it does not have urinators so it got a huge space for women to line up for stalls. Took forever to find the light switches, or not finding it at all because the lights are motion sensors. So that works out nice. I cooked yummy chicken curry and rice to fuel up for the grind to Camp Muir early morning.

Calm and crisp cold morning of Paradise. We set off with a cold breakfast with so so visibility. It cleared up as the sun got up, it was beautiful at Panorama Ridge. As we quickly got on to Muir Glacier and Mt Rainier summit cleared out of the cloud. I stared at it while skinning up and saw a big puff of white cloud shooting down Nisqually Icefall on south face of Mt Rainier. A second later hearing a deep rumble as the avalanche got bigger down the icefall. We were miles away from the reach of the avalanche but the magnitude of this class 4 avalanche makes me want to just run away for safty! Soon after the summit was surrounded in dust cloud and we heard a couple more of avalanche but could not see it. A cold air minutes later with ice crystals blew through us.

Visibility dropped to 100m as the day progressed. We could follow some wands only a couple of inches sticking out the snow. We knew the bearing was pretty much dead-on North so we just kept on going and seeing the wands.
The sun was in and out, but the radian heat was great, so the outside with breeze was warmer than inside the stoney hut, which we had it all to ourselves.

The door of the Muir public shelter was much of a representation of a bomb hatch. with doors and windows much like that of a ship. Solar panels on top to power the emergency radio. The floor inside was full of ice. There were a small bench area for 4 - 5 cooking at same time but most area are beds, probably sleep for 20 and it will be crowded.


We made dinner with fresh ingredient and slept at 7pm. after buried the sun silo and a window we dug out for lights. Just to get up at midnight for a pitch black moonless navigation in the serac fields!

I was half sleep for the next 5 hours, it felt like the longest night. The ranger and some of the Denali training guides came in at midnight to sleep, which was the time we were getting up to get ready. It was clear out but a little windy. Not too cold but I didn't feel warm wearing 6 layers pants and jackets. No moon, we could see some stars. it was pretty dark. We put on our skis headed over to gain the Cathedral Gap.

It was heavy breathing for maybe 100 meters of elevation gain to cross the Beehive, a little steep and rocky near top of the CG so we boot packed to save effort. The other side was the Ingraham Glacier, so we hugged the rock wall to skiers left to stay high and avoid glacier. Thinking the snow would be pretty wind affected and icy, we left skis there. We couldn't really see what we were avoiding but trying to stay not-so-scared of the big crevasses theoretically to skiers right and lower down We had some navigation confusion as we needed to boot pack very steep slope, which seemed leading to a rock face. but after dropped lower elevation to almost glacier level, the apartment sized seracs and highway width crevasses started to emerge in the dim end of our headlamp, we screamed the loudest as our inner voice can go, "Go up, Go back up! sh!t".

The snow was about ankle to shin deep, boot packing at near 3500m took quite a bit breath out of us. I was ahead for every 20 steps to catch up breath, repeat until I warmed up my hands and toe, then someone else.

We got to the steep part of the Ingraham Direct route where the route narrows and the slopes steepens to about 40 degree. We dug a pit to see the snow pack and testify the avalanche information we read yesterday. It was 40cm 1F/4F density storm snow on top of icy sun crust, as I encircled the block with my gloves from behind the block to the crust, the top 40cm layer slid off. To my personal experience, it could be a "easy 5-10" on a proper compression test. Skyler got his test result pretty similar to mine. We were scratching our head and logically convinced that the route is not safe as we had many evidence of avalanche danger we experience yesterday. We would need to boot pack for 2 hours on this avy slope and not much change to dodge if anything happens. We would have got wiped out and down into crevasses.

Logical decisions are always easy to come up with, the hard part is to make the call. None of us sounding ready to give up and ski back to the camp. The sun was rising and the slopes were in the light. It would have been a gorgeous day for a safer route but not ID. We were convinced to back off the route as its been late to be safe.

On the way back to our skis, We saw the glaciers and seracs we wouldn't be able to in the dark. It was quite stunning!






The skiing at the Beehive bowl in front of the hut was pure awesomeness. fresh snow and warm sun with Mt Adams in the back ground. The deep tele turns were amazing.




We enjoyed sun at Muir Camp and napped until noon to ski down to the parking lot. We ran into fleets of people going up. mostly guided groups neatly grinding up the glacier, where we rip up the sweet turns right beside them, I had to hide the grim on my face every tele turn I make, the pack was pretty heavy.

We as we unpacking and packing to Antons car, it started to snow again, so we quickly drove down to ranger station to check out and give our avy report. Stocked up with booze and awaited the long drive back to Vancouver.