Leaderboard

Yocum Ridge was on our objective list for this winter. Initially, I was thinking sometime in March or late Feb would be optimal conditions. On Thurs 2/1, I was perusing Mountain Forecast and noticed that the temperatures on Hood were still quite cold, despite the unseasonable warmth in the rest of the PNW. Wind/visibility for Sat looked excellent. I also found some photos from a couple days prior of the South side, and the rime ice coverage looked quite good. I texted Ian, and he responded right away with a “lets do it”. On Fri he met me at work in Cashmere at 3:45pm and we left for Oregon. At 8:45pm we were skinning up the cat track towards the top of the Palmer chair lift. With Ian carrying our 70m rope, we were able to sustain around 2,600’ of gain to the top of Palmer in around 90min. From there we left the cat track and traversed another 800’ up to Illumination Saddle, arriving at 11pm sharp. We set up the tent, made dinner, and were sleeping by midnight. We awoke at 6am to start the morning routine. I got breakfast and water started while Ian prepped gear. We were on the move by 7:20am, just behind three pairs of climbers on the Leuthold Couloir route. We quickly descended and crossed the Reid Glacier and gained the ridge at 8,800’. The first 700’ of ridge climbing was very fast, and conditions were perfect. Firm snow made for one-swing sticks. At the base of the first gendarme, we set up belay and I lead two short pitches to the top. The rime was still quite solid and easy to climb. Protection was with pickets. We ended up using pickets, a couple cams, and a couple ice screws on route, but mostly pickets. From there, we slung the top of the gendarme and with no way to ease into the rappel, I jumped off the top. The rappel was very awkward and mostly sideways along the ridge. Ian followed, and we traversed a longer section of moderate simul-climbing terrain on the serrated ridge crest. I made it to a ledge shortly after and in the rising sun, I changed into my t-shirt and belayed Ian up. The terrain on this part of the climb is amazing. The rime ice formations are sharp and huge. Coupled with the blue skies and views of the other Cascade volcanoes it makes for a very unique and beautiful setting for the technical climbing. We simul-climbed the ridge crest past the less-remarkable 2nd gendarme on the South side, and up the 3rd gendarme. We then made a similarly awkward traversing rappel from the top. This time I had to take out an ice tool while on rappel to get around an awkward tower and back to the ridge crest. The rope reached just far enough to get past the scary terrain. From there, I called out “off belay”. Ian pulled his backup picket and came down as well. From here, we solo’d up the ridge to the base of the massive upper buttress. I entered a forking gully at the base, and decided to go left. This lead to a nice flat bench, where I re-organized my pack a bit and called my wife. Meanwhile Ian pulled the rope, packed it up, and carried it through the moderate terrain up to the bench. I often like to joke that Ian is basically the guide and I am just a privileged client. He is often willing to do 90% of the work on a route without a single complaint, which sometimes makes me feel guilty. At the bench, we switched the rope to my pack and Ian took a turn leading us up to a very intimidating looking rime-ice headwall. From what I have read, not many people, if any, actually go to the top of this thing. It’s much bigger than the gendarmes, and we attempted two vertical routes to get up it. Ian tried both unsuccessfully. I was feeling good and gave it a shot, only to have the rime beneath my feet, then knees, then ice picks all give out and I took a good 15’ fall. Up until this point, we were making very good time, but we burned over an hour trying to scrape up the headwall. We decided to try the right branch of the gully, and ended up rappelling a full 35m down into a 60 degree gully. I would have liked to try and find a way up the upper buttress, but we were starting to run out of time, and I believe most other parties (if not all) also made the 3rd rap down into the gully like we did. This rappel was the only place that we deviated from the ridge crest on the climb. Once in the gully, we crawled upward until reaching a 15’ vertical step. Ian managed to lead up, build an anchor using a picket, and belay me. From there, we were able to follow the rest of the gully up to the ridge crest again. By then it was 3pm. We could see the top of the Leuthold route, and the last of the groups we left with was just heading up to the false summit. We solo’d around lots of unstable rime formations on the South side of the ridge, and finally reached the end of the technical difficulties. We stopped there at around 10,600’ to melt water and we were both exhausted. That is not the easiest 1,800’ of climbing one can do. We haggardly slogged our way up to summit and reached it at 4:20pm in warm, windless conditions. The views were amazing, and I sat there on my knees for around 10min just resting and enjoying the scenery. After taking photos, we followed the bootpack down the South-side route, past the sulfur vents and back to our tent at Illumination Saddle. We packed up in around an hour as darkness was setting in. Not wanting to ski down in the dark, we forwent dinner and skied decent powder down toward Timberline Lodge as the last rays of sun disappeared. We made it back to the truck in the dark at 6:15pm. We then proceeded to crank the heat up and beeline for the Hood River McDonalds. 4 hours and 4 cheeseburgers later, I made it home to my wife and one-month old baby girl, Navy. GPX Track: https://www.alltrails.com/explore/recording/mount-hood-yocum-ridge-2c8ed85 Gear List: https://www.packwizard.com/packs Video: