Route: Standard route from Timberline lodge (south side). Old chute to ridge to summit. Skied the ascent route.
Starting Elevation: ~6,000' (tree line)
Summit Elevation: 11,240' (more or less)
Elevation Gain: ~5,000'
Round Trip Distance: Who cares? There's absolutely no approach. You park at tree line then just head up.

Following my ski descent of Mount Shasta, a few days of bad weather was predicted for the Cascades. I had four days to slowly make my way up to northern Oregon (and wash my clothes and take a shower for the first time in a week).

On Saturday, the day I arrived, I could see the mountain. It wasn't socked in like I expected it to be.

All day, I had regrets I hadn't gone up the mountain. Weather windows are precious in the Cascades. What a shame to waste a day. Serious storms were predicted to move in near the end of the week. My only consolation was reports that the snow was terribly icy and no good for skiing. Quality over quantity, I told myself.

I spent the day down at 800' elevation, near the Columbia river, hiking through forests of enormous trees and blanketed with ferns.

Sunday was predicted to have perfect weather. Relatively warm temps, clear skies no wind. Perfect.

I met Natalie (SnowAlien) Saturday evening at the famous Timberline Lodge, where she was pre-celebrating her next day's accomplishment in the bar.

"Here's to five miserable months on the wagon...and all the irreparable harm that it's caused me."

From all the beta I had gathered, this tends to be an infamously icy climb and ski. Talking to other prospective skiers in the parking lot, I gathered that the common consensus was that there was no hurry getting to the summit. Being a Colorado skier, I thought that meant starting at dawn would be fine (a relatively late start). I would find out later, that was still too early!

Here's the beta...

From the climbers' parking lot at the Timberline Lodge, follow the packed snow trail upwards. The climbers' path goes to the right of the ski resort. Keep going up towards the crater (when in doubt, follow the hundreds of other climbers. If there aren't hundreds of other climbers, you probably picked a bad day to climb). The crater is known as Devil's Kitchen. You will see a bare patch of ground with sulfurous gasses spewing out. Enjoy the wondrous geology, but don't play on top of the vents...or go in them (all day, we repeated the phrase "all good in the hood," but the truth is, it's much better to be on the Hood than in the Hood.)

From Devil's Kitchen, if you look left and up, you will see a ridge known as the Hogsback. There are two main options to gain the summit: the Old Chute or the Pearly Gates. The Pearly Gates route appears to be, by far, the most popular route and will likely have a good boot pack (and traffic jams). To do the Pearly Gates, climb the Hogsback. Near the top of the Hogsback is a massive bergshrund that you will need to circumvent to the left or right. The Pearly Gates is a chute that leads through rime encrusted cliffs that guard the summit.

You will notice a lot of climbers on this route who are not carrying skis. This may seem incredibly odd...climbing a mountain and not skiing it, but it is actually quite popular. Some skiers I met on the summit tell me it's a sport called "neanderthaling." A hundred years ago, before people were skiing big mountains, it was actually considered to be an exciting sport, believe it or not!

I didn't climb this route, so if you are into neanderthalling, you should seek out additional beta.

The Old Chute is what most skiers choose to climb, and often ski. This route is less popular, which is good if you don't want to take out dozens of people on your descent. To access the Old Chute, make your way to the Hogsback, and then make an ascending traverse to the left. An obvious chute will come into view. In fact, there are a couple different options to climb above the cliffs. However, the Old Chute is the only one wide enough for skis (unless you want to straight line). At the top of the Old chute, you will be on the summit ridge. Climb right to the summit. Say hello to the fifty other people already on the summit. Reverse the process for the ski down (Hood can be a crowded mountain, so be mindful of the safety of skiers climbing up).

Now, here's the story and pics...

6:00 a.m., we begin the skin. Up we go!

Most of the route below Devil's Kitchen is fairly low angle. However, well below the kitchen it steepens to the point where I could no longer skin (without ski crampons), and switched to boot crampons.

If you follow the line of ants in the picture above, you will see the Pearly Gates route.

Ascending up and left from the Hogsback, the slope quickly steepens to an estimated forty degrees. From here to the summit ridge, the snow was rock solid and required front pointing with the crampons.

Just before arriving at the bottom of the old chute, I spied a flat section at the base of the cliffs. This was a good place to rest (I had a long time to wait before the snow would soften). I waited here for two other climbers to climb through the chute, as they were sending ice chunks down. I'm also sometimes a bad ski partner and get way ahead of my partner. This was the perfect spot to let her catch up enough to be in communication. However, I wanted to stay far enough ahead of her so that we could climb the chute one-by-one.

The day previous, we had talked about how steep the chute would be. I informed her that I thought I remembered gb saying it was forty degrees.

"Oh, that guy always underestimates the angle! He's arrogant like you! It's probably more like fifty degrees!" my partner exclaimed.

"Well, I know for a fact that you tend to overestimate angles...by five to ten degrees. So, perhaps I should just average both of your estimates, and predict it to be 45 degrees," I replied.

As I climbed through the chute, I thought to myself: "Yep, this looks like forty five degrees. Forty five and icy as shit!" The chute lived up to its reputation as being icy.

The Old Chute is a little out of view. It is beyond the hump in the foreground and before the corniced section in the distance.

I arrived at the summit at 11 a.m. I was greeted by a few dozen neanderthalers and a few skiers. The day was warm, but it would take a lot of radiation to soften up the super icy slopes. No worries, though, there are a lot of things worse than hanging out on the summit of Mt. Hood on a beautiful day. As I waited, the hordes of neanderthalers dissipated. Within an hour, it was just a bunch of us hoodlum skiers left on the summit (get it? Hood-lum?).

While on the summit, a group of snow boarders came up through the Pearly Gates and informed us that they watched a climber (without an ice axe) fall from the entrance to the Pearly Gates and tumble into Devil's Kitchen. Their description sounded pretty horrific. They said he was being attended to, and we all assumed he would be well. It wasn't until the next day, that I got word that the man had died from his injuries. Very sad to hear.


I waited on the summit for almost three hours before clicking into the skis and making my way down. It was still icy, but I felt it would be okay. Most people apparently choose to carry their skis down the ridge and put them on at the top of the chute. Well, that is for the folks that bring their skis to the summit, which is definitely not most. Most people stash their skis around Devil's Kitchen. I chose to ski directly off the summit. This required a short uphill side step and then a very careful side step into the chute. Just above the chute, the stepping gets tricky, since you find yourself directly on top of the ridge and, thus, have the potential to slide off either side of the mountain. Both of those possibilities would not be desirable.

Have you seen that video of the skier who accidentally skis backward off the mountain (not Hood. A different mountain)? That's what I kept envisioning of my fate if I wasn't careful. Needless to say, I made it to the chute without falling off the mountain.

The top of the chute was both icy and narrow. By "narrow," I mean the width of the skiable/side-steppabe snow, which was bounded by rime ice to the sides. I'll admit, there was a few feet of side stepping before and in between jump turns. However, the chute was probably only sixty vertical feet, or so. And most of it was jump-turnable.

Below the chute, the skiing got good! A sustained stretch of a forty degree, barely softening snow pack allowed for some fun turns down to the Kitchen. Then it was fast, easy, and fun skiing for thousands of vertical feet.

I know there seems to be a lack of shots of skiing the chute. I just felt like it wasn't an ideal place to pull out my camera and practice my photography skills. Fortunately, I had my Go Bro to capture the moments! Almost all of the ski descent is contained in the video edit below. I really didn't edit out much. So, great beta! But with that being said, it is a loooong video (lots of vert on that mountain). So, make sure your boss and nosy coworkers are out to lunch before you start watching it.



Thanks for reading.