PTHudspeth

Yeah, Yeah....Sorry about the mis-fire with the picture posting. That was my first shot at posting pix and I just hosed it up. See if I can get it right later in the season!

Climb: Mt. Hood-Hogsback Date of Climb: 5/15/2004 Trip Report: Our party left the timerline lodge at just after midnight on Saturday morning with our thousand closest friends under clear skies and relatively warm weather. Routefinding was not an issue due to the seemingly hundreds of headlamps heading north. Clouds rolled in between three and four obscuring the view of the moon and sunrise. As the bergschund was completely open we roped up and skirted it to the left as did most other climbers. One brave party chose to save time from waiting in line and chose to cross the 'shrund by going straight over it. Check out the picture below! We got to the summit after sunrise just in time for the skies to clear offering an absolutely killer view. The summit was windy and we were exhausted so we snapped a couple of pictures and started the trip back down. Past the hogsback on the decent the weather turned and we made the slog back down in whiteout conditions. Snow warmed up and became a real slog although we never did really poshole. Gear Notes: Used standard fare including ice axe, crampons, rope--although some people were not roped in. Approach Notes: Snow was in good condition for cramponing all the way to the top. Coming back down later in the day the snow softed up substantially.

Thanks Mike. Your insight is certainly appreciated by your less experienced folks such as myself!