Mt Hood via Hogsback
tl;dr: We ascended and skied Mt. Hood (Wy'East) via the south side normal route up the Pearly Gates and down the Old Chute.
I spent May 2022 in Portland, Oregon, a city with amazing access to Nature. Mt Hood is the state's highest point, a glaciated volcano only less than two hours from downtown. May has been rather rainy, preventing me with views of the white peak from the city. Having visited Timberline Lodge twice in the past, I knew I wanted to summit Mt. Hood one day.
Weather has been rather tricky to time for Mt. Hood. Esther and I had a few days in mind for Mt. Hood, but high winds, low visibility, and potential avy risk made many days not a possibility. We were fortunate that Monday, May 16th finally worked out --conditions were not ideal with low visibility below 9000ft, but at least the clouds cleared up above and the gusts were not too high. With relatively low avy risk, we brought our beacons and left our shovel & probes in the car. I also brought my crampon and ice axe.
Mt. Hood is a rather straightfoward climb --we drove up to Timberline Lodge at 6000ft and ascended via the normal route. This climb takes us up the ski resort until the top of the Palmer Chair. There is a good groomed skin route up until 8600ft, and I skinned for a few hundred vertical feet afterwards on a sticky ice surface. At some point the ice got too steep for skinning (and I currently do not own ski crampons) so I transitioned to my crampons and booted up the mountain. We ascended east of Crater Rock towards Devils Kitchen. Devils kitchen is a rather flat plateau, offering a good place to rest before the final push. However, the sulfur fumes made quite a stinky smell, so after a quick break we continued onwards.
Next up, we went up the Hogsback, a ridge splitting the east and west of crater rock. Mt. Hood's crater rim protected us from wind as we went up the hogsback. Pre-established bootpacks helped us through the softening snow. After ascending the hogsback, we climbed through the Pearly Gates, probably the most beautiful scenery I have climbed through.
The rime was very aesthetic to see and climb through. The rime was rather crunchy and scrambly, however with an ice axe and crampons the climb was pretty straightforward and not too technical. As someone who does not ice climb, I felt that self arresting skills and feeling comfortable on a 40 degree pitch were sufficient for the ascent.
Unlike Shasta where false summits and plateaus continually deceive where the summit really is, Mt. Hood's true summit followed shortly after the pearly gates, and soon we found ourselves on top of Oregon!
Being a rather cloudy day, to the north we had nice views of Adams and Rainier (but Helens was below the clouds), and to the south we could see Jefferson (but not the Sisters). We stayed for a bit, got some pictures, chatted with some other parties, and began to make our way down.
The descent was a on rather nasty sheet of ice. Since we carried our skis all the way up the summit, unlike some other parties who left their skies at Hogsback and downclimbed the Pearly Gates, we were committed to skiing so we traversed the summit ridge towards the Old Chute. The ridge was very gusty, with the path only two feet from a 1000+ foot drop onto the northern face of the mountain, and it did not help that my a-framed skis and backpack acted as a sail to catch even more wind. Having been blown off a bike less than two months ago, my tolerance for wind was still rather low, so I traversed part of the ridge on my knees and butt. Finally, we got to the old chute, found a relatively flat part of the mountain, and began transitioning for our descent.
Descent conditions were not pleasant. The Old Chute was a 40-45 degree nasty sheet of frozen ice. Many jump turns were required to navigate the narrow bowl, each turn for me resulting in some more sliding and vibrations on my foot as I tried to catch my ski edge. The slope angle eventually mellowed out, and I took out my camera to get some nice ski action shots.
Overall this was a very pleasant and fun day! Hopefully this blog post was a useful read: for more resources, you can see my strava. We used mountain forecast and NWS for weather. This website has a nice diagram of the route options; we followed the Pearly Gates as it was early season and the Bergschrund was covered.