Illumination Rock - Mt. Hood - 5/3/2008
Trip: Illumination Rock - Mt. Hood -
Date: 5/3/2008
Trip Report:Saturday was the second time in three weeks that we made the trek up to I-rock to do some mixed climbing. I'd never climbed on it before. Now that I'm in the know - I'd highly recommend it to everyone - it has stellar alpine mixed routes, from fairly moderate to desperately hard, with lots of varied, engaging climbing.
Trip #1:
Tim/Crackman, his friend Laura and I headed out the weekend of horrible winter weather (April 20), the one sandwiched between great sunny weather. It kept almost everyone away from the mountain. I think we were the only suckers above the top of the Palmer.
With the GPS crapping out on us right from the start, we used map and compass to get us to I-rock through the whiteout. I won the toss for the first lead. The route we did started on teh south side near the saddle, went up a couple short mixed sections with ice up corners and excellent drytooling to reach the ridge.
From there, it traversed over to a steep crack. Fortunately there was just enough ice in the crack for it to go. You can see Tim just above it near the belay.
The belay consisted of two bolts buried in ice. I didn't dare dig them out - it was our only option for gear/bailing and I didn't want to know how mankey they were.
Tim wanted to try and top out (we were very close to the summit), but he couldn't find a way through the rime. We bailed.
Trip #2
This time it was just Tim and I and the weather was warm and sunny. We ran into a couple camping at the saddle who helped us over in a brief whiteout.
South Side of I-rock:
This time we dropped down onto the north side. Conditions were fairly whiteout, so we took the first cool-looking line we found. It was Tim's pitch, and he styled his way through an early mixed section to a ramp of solid alpine ice.
(note- there is a LOT of foreshortening going on in this photo. A full 60m pitch brought us fairly close to the summit block seen in the photo)
The line we chose ended up converging with the line we did a couple weeks previous and we ended at the same bolt station. It was obvious that things had melted out a lot since our last visit. Fortunately, this opened up a crack system towards the summit. I declined the lead, as I was nervous about how to bail from the rime-covered slabby summit. Tim made a go of it, but ultimately bailed close to the summit block.
Again, I would highly recommend I-rock during the winter. The mixed climbing is very high quaility. There was not much in the way of good ice gear, but there are enough cracks to get good rock pro when you need it.
Donnie
BTW, I posted about replacing some bolts on I-rock in a seperate thread. If you've got anything to say about it, please contribute - I have no idea what the local ethics dictate for something like that.
Thanks
Gear Notes:Mixed rack, stubbies
