Mt. Hood - Leuthold Couloir

Weather was forecast to be good early this week, and Jason Schuman replied to a post I had on cascadeclimbers.com looking for a partner for Hood. I haven't been up it before, and had my eye on the Sandy Glacier Headwall. Jason had been up Hood quite a few times and countered with a suggestion of Leuthold Couloir due to the recent warm spell.

Mt. Hood has a reputation for being quite crowded. The access is the easiest of all the Cascade volcanoes, and its proximity to Portland is also a contributing factor. Our plan was to get an early start (or a late start, depending on how you look at it). After a quick dinner with Christine, I got on the road at 7pm. I met up with Jason at a P&R in east Portland around 10p made our way out towards I-84 (and I'm pretty sure we saw some ladies of the evening on our way out), and headed out towards Hood.

Jason and I shot the breeze. He's an educated guy with a strong climbing resume and a young family. Like me, he's caught a case of "unemployed"-itis. Easy conversation passed the time on our drive out. We got the parking lot around 11:45pm. To my surprise, the lot is completely lit up by floodlights. I found this quite odd; how could anyone bivy out here? I guess they don't.

We left the car five minutes past midnight; I figured we'd have the mountain mostly to ourselves, given the late night start and weekday. I couldn't have been more wrong! As we made our way up along the Timberline ski lifts, I saw the lights of several parties ahead of us. There were also lights of several parties coming up behind us. A group of 3 overtook us pretty quickly - they were really moving. We kept a steady pace, occasionally stopping, turning the lamps off, and taking in the amazing views of the stars on the clear night.

I felt unnervingly warm and dry breezes from the west as we made our way up along the lifts. The snow was hard (though making your way on the cat track trail left something to be desired for sure). The warm air made me nervous about stability. As we gained elevation towards Illumination Rock, those fears abated as I froze my ass off. There was a party at Illumination Saddle roping up for Leuthold's as well. We decided to take our time roping up to give a good distance between us and them. My teeth were chattering and I was shivering in my thin Micro Puff coat as we flaked the rope, tied in, and coiled it up. I was impressed by Jason wearing nothing but a windshirt and softshell.

When it looked like the other party was far enough ahead, we dropped down and made our way across the glacier. As we got underneath the couloir proper, there was tons of snow and ice coming down - like a small waterfall. We figured it was from the other party above, and took shelter below a rock on the north side of the couloir thinking it would eventually abate as they moved higher. After a generous food/water break, the stuff was still coming down. At this point it was about 4:30 or so, and we decided to get a move on. We each took hits to the helmet and shoulders - nothing serious, but almost enough to get your bell rung. This motivated me to climb faster, and I kicked steps as fast as I could. We agreed that the terrain was mellow enough to go up unroped, which helped contribute to speed and efficiency.

Eventually we got to a junction, and opted for a narrow couloir to the right. This was literally a waterfall of little ice and snow bits. At this point first light was upon us. We had made considerable progress, and the couloir looked short. We went up it quickly, though my steps blew out giving Jason some difficulty making it up. He commented to me that he thought we might be off - route in an adjacent couloir, but that it should link back up with the regular route. I was nervous that I'd top out on the couloir only to find myself on top of a fat cornice or something. To my relief, he was correct, and some straightforward traversing led us back to the route proper (and the steps of previous parties, a good sign). As the sun was rising on the other side of the mountain, it cast a long shadow across the valleys to the west.

My altimeter suggested that we had another 1500' or so before the summit. By now it was after 6am, and I was getting fatigued - the extra 2 gallons of water ballast I tossed in the pack for 'conditioning' was getting old fast, and fatigue from being awake since yesterday morning was starting to set in. Fortunately, my altimeter was off. We topped out on the final snowfield and summit ridge to amazing bluebird skies, views of the other Southern volcanoes, and warming sunlight. The setting was awesome. We followed the well - worn path to the summit proper, where there were at least 5 other people already, including the party that was ahead of us. A quick look down to the hogsback showed at least a dozen other people headed up to the summit. This was indeed a popular mountain! We lounged, ate, and I finally dumped the water.


The Pearly Gates, the typical South Side ascent/descent route, was iced up so we followed everyone else in descending slightly to the west. The snow was steep and very rime-y, with ice
chunks that seemed like shale. We quickly got down to the Hogsback, changed clothes as it was warming considerably, and proceeded down. The descent is a bit punishing; you can see Timberline Lodge as well as the parking lot the entire way! We squinted and Jason was pretty sure he saw a white speck that was my car. On top of that, the posts from the ski lifts were quite visible. I figured we'd dispatch with this descent really quickly. Wrong again - I think it was foreshortening or something; it seemed to take hours to descend, but only took a couple. Jason has excellent glissading skills. My bantam weight, which aids on ascents, puts me at a distinct disadvantage in this arena. Unless it is steep such as here. As Jason made progress aided by gravity, I had to keep plodding along.

Jason also had a brilliant idea and sweet - talked the ski lift operators into downloading us to the bottom of the Magic Mile, probably saving us a half hour. All we had to do was look a little pathetic to them (not too much of a stretch at this point), and they bought it. Sweet. A quick stroll past the lodge (movie buffs note: this was where The Shining was filmed) brought us to the car in just under 11 hours round trip. There were sunny skies, it was probably in the 60s, and was about the nicest spring day I've seen this year in the Cascades.

We changed clothes, exchanged war stories with other climbers in the lot, and signed out our permit before heading down to Government Camp for a huge burger. After I dropped Jason off at his car, I began the long drive back to Seattle. It was about 1pm, and I'd been awake for 31 hours. I caught up with Joe and Mom on the phone, and then pulled over at a rest stop for a quick snooze. I made it back to town just in time to pick up Christine from work; ever the sweetheart, she cooked me a big fajita dinner (I had already digested the 1/2lb burger plus fries from a few hours earlier and was ready for more). I was passed out on the couch by 7pm or so. Good days these are, good days.