Whenever I cross the Morrison bridge on a clear day in Portland one particular object seems to stand out on the horizon - Mount Hood. Hood is the highest mountain in Oregon at 11,249 ft yet around 10,000 people a year climb it. Now every time that I see it I can say I am one of them.

This past Thursday a good friend of mine invited me to climb it and I quickly agreed to it. The exact conversation went like this:

Craig: want to climb a mountain?

me: yes

Craig: Hood?

me: yep

Craig: Have time Friday night/Saturday morning?

me: yep

The next day I made my way to the local REI to rent and purchase some gear (an Ice Axe, Helmet and Head Lamp) and that night found myself in the Timberline parking lot freezing my ass off. Joining us on the hike were two others - Jon and Tom. Everyone but myself had climbed Hood at least once before, with Tom having climbed it three times previously.

The first words Tom spoke after parking the car and feeling the wind and coldness - “OK let’s go back now.” Maybe it was the excitement or maybe it was because of the month I had spent working in Copenhagen during the winter, but the cold wasn’t affecting me at all. I actually stripped down to my underwear and changed in the middle of the parking lot while everyone else huddled in the car.

We started the climb at 1:40am. Climbers try to Summit before the sun fully rises as the final part of the hike can get dangerous when the snow begins to melt and freeze. So by doing it early you attempt to avoid that danger.

The day before the hike I mentally prepared myself for it. A few years ago I climbed South Sisters so I had some experience with climbing. Namely that no matter what shape that I was in physically there would come a time where I would be looking at my feet focusing on each individual step and would have to will myself to continue on. This happened quite often during the hike.

Despite the strong winds we managed to completely avoid losing any gear. At least 3 times we had a piece of equipment fly off down the mountain only to be chased down and retrieved by Craig.

One of my favorite parts of the hike was when the sun was still rising on the other side of the mountain. This would cause the snow to melt and blow over the peak. The sun would catch on the snow and light it up.

We kept a pretty slow pace. The softness of the snow ment that if your footing wasn’t sure then you would be sliding back down. Repeating that over thousands of steps is very exhausting. So we weren’t surprised to see lots of teams pass us on the way up and then back down again.

The hardest part of the hike was dealing with the strong and cold winds. Often I would have to stop and kneel during the hike until the wind died down.

When we got past Crater Rock and on to the the Hogsback we learned that many teams were turning back and not completing the summit due to the weather conditions. By the time we were there though the weather had cleared up enough that it wasn’t completely insane to make the final traversal from the Pearly Gates to the Summit.

The climb up to the Pearly Gates was one of the more difficult parts of the hike. To accomplish this climb we needed to equip our grampons, helmets and use our ice axes. Equipping my grampons was particularly challenging due to the extreme snow flurries that would blow past us on the Hogsback. More than once I had to pause and heat my hands back from numbness.

Using the ice axe and grampons was a whole new challenge for myself. It was a slow process of planting the axe handle into the ice and using it belay yourself while you kick your feet into solid footing. The entire time there is the risk that you will slip and slide down uncontrollably into a crevice at the bottom.

8 Hours later though and we were at the top.

The trip back down was actually the hardest part of the hike. Coming up we couldn’t actually see how far we had to go or how high we had to climb because of the darkness. Going down was just the opposite and the parking lot never seemed to ever get closer while my body began to hurt more and more.

After all of it though I can now look on Hood and say to myself that I had conquered it. Which is a pretty good feeling. It was a hard hike but I honestly enjoyed every bit of it.

All pictures were taken using my Nikon D90 and Sigma 10-20 lens.