Water

so again, someone saying a high clearance car.... a stock toyota corolla can do it without scraping or any worry. So....just don't drive your lambo up there

posted this on TAY: "i have a 10yr old corolla and made it up there absolutely fine. The road is FINE. EXCEPT for the water bars that have been installed on the road. These seem to go in pretty regularly on any sloped FS dirt road in a burn area... I made it up driving fast between them slow down to go over them, never scraped except on way out went a bit faster than I should over one but just some light scrape on undercarriage. any talk of road being so horrible is BS..actually other than water bars (basically speed bump/dips) I think it was improved a fair bit from prior years. -snow about 1.5mile from cold springs~ and once on it was fairly continuous. used trail runners didnt take skis or boots off pack until 10,500ft. was just that much faster. " in the AM no flotation was needed. Never took ice ax or crampons out. Microspikes are a great way to do adams much of the time-its what my wife uses. In the AM fast moving in trail runners. I dont know how it was in the PM without skis on but I bet it sucked like it always does once it gets really warm and sun baked=postholing. you will be fine with parking. There is only more and more space becoming available as the vestigial snow patches melt. but for god sakes people if you want to camp out why do you subject yourself to being at the TH where it is a ZOO all night? I'm sorry your tent is 5ft from my headlights at 4:30am and we're slamming car doors.. i will never understand why people subject themselves to that

denalidave.. i had a fun event like that as well coming back from the northern idaho border crossing back into the states. Its fairly empty place.. so about 100ft past the the check i sped up pretty good (maybe 40?) The road had a bend in it and was wide and there were two large SUVs parked side by side like they were talking, half blocking the lane I was in, so I veered a bit into the center empty/divider/turn lane and went around them, my mistake as I went past I saw they were Idaho Crime Investigation or something like that. Didn't have obvious lights on the SUV or anything to give away at a distance. Needless to say the one zoomed up on me real quick (I had slowed down of course) and pulled me right over not 500ft past where I passed them. They were not doing traffic/radar but he knew I was speeding (i think it was still 25 or so right near the border until you get about a half mile down the road) so I dont think he could actually write me a ticket for going X amount over or whatnot. He asked where we're from and where we're going, we said back to Portland Oregon. He said, you going through Coeur D'alene? We said yeah (65 miles away or so) and he said, "we're going there too. You can drive in front and if you go a mile over the speed limit I'll give you a ticket." Lets just say that first 30 miles was about the most difficult driving I've ever done. Didn't help that it was hilly and windy road so I couldn't just put cruise control on 5 below the limit. At some point after about a half hour they decided they had more pressing matters and passed me. talk about some stress...

How much does run pace correlate to speed in the mountains? Other than if you're fantastically fit or grossly out of shape having a bearing on both.. For instance I don't run at all but am of average speed compared to range of people I've climbed with, handful faster and handful slower. Some of the slower are runners.

It would have to be really really bad not to get a car up there. Think I saw on TAY someone took their accord or civic up recently. Ive taken my corolla on all sorts of roads people said I need a truck or SUV for. Never been skunked on getting to where I want nor stranded. Drive slowly and smartly. Half the SUVs I see in town only have an inch more clearance than my car and.

over in Michigan/Ontario going to Windsor from Detroit for a bachelor party because the drinky age there is 19 and we had a few guys under 21 with us. They asked if any of us had been convicted of a crime or some sort and one guy (over 21) answered truthfully. He wasn't driving, but was a passenger. He had gotten a DUI 4 years previous in Wisconsin -- ie no pending litigation, etc, completed whatever he needed to and had a fully legal drivers license, etc. Needless to say the Bachelor party was spent in ole' Ypsilanti Michigan and was mostly dry for those under 21. In retrospect it would have made a lot more sense all of us just to say no, him included. In a previous time (Fall of 2000) a girl in our group stupidly brought "Pipes.... with Resin" (verbatim Canadian border patrol words) across. They told us we shouldn't do that, gave us the pipes back, and let us continuing on our way to a 'music event' (a rave) in Toronto. Go figure

haven't been on the route before. no current conditions info avail from rangers. Original plan had us thinking the chute was going to be icy enough to justify some pro and at least a second tool or two, and that we'd do the whole route in our standard climbing boots. But with the post-holey warmth..and the refresher cycle of winter conditions for a few weeks back, thinking this might really be more of a snow climb. thus we're really leaning to bring the skis and skin up the turtle/towards hazard. Beyond that curious if anyone has any feedback on skiing the kautz itself, or upper part? Spose if it is spicy we'll take'm off for that portion. appreciate any feedback, thanks.

in all prior years my corolla made it in just fine. but thats previous years--there is a chance the road underwent some major washouts due to the fire/etc. anyone who went up this weekend want to report?

Yo thanks for that-you are correct-i try to get placenames and geography correct so appreciate the correction. i updated the title of that picture

i think you're good on parking now that sno-park season is over, not sure a NW forest pass is even needed. also unmentioned is a helmet--fortunately that piece of gear requires little in the way of training but I'd generally recommend it from the hogsback up, or even just below crater rock if there are signs crater rock has dropped stuff off. re: roping up: not unless you're placing protection (pickets) which anchor the rope to the slope. Otherwise imo it is useless, plus it slows you down, requires you to focus on shit other than your footwork and self belay, and exposes you to more risk. here is the 'hard' part of climbing the southside--go as fast as you safely can. you go up from the hogsback, the thin line coming out from crater rock.

did you do shasta and adams when they were melted out and just all on rock then or did you have experience using crampons and ice axe? because if you feel you have those skills down sufficiently that is really all you need for the southside of hood, to feel secure (enough) using those items on a slightly steeper slope. If you have no experience with those tools then you should acquire them and find somewhere without consequence to practice using them.

http://www.turns-all-year.com/skiing_snowboarding/trip_reports/index.php?topic=28663.0

thanks for sharing, a good read. i think the foremost thing is the amount of relative risk given it is a youth, no less your own daughter, was higher than you'd or most parents would like. The headlamp was unfortunate but it seems like even if hers worked maybe doing the short-short rope was the most prudent travel method for her--she may have been stumbling down in front. But it doesn't sound like conditions themselves were an issue, even the cold, I'm sure you could have built a protected spot and/or given her some of your warmth layers. Not sure if you had a small stove but hunkering down, giving her your puffy and making some hot drink could have gone a long way. I'm not a parent but when working with kids I get pretty anxious watching them climb fences or do anything where there is even a slight chance of injury so I can only imagine how I'd feel with my own. However in a paradoxical way, exposure to risk is one of things things that can actually be really important in life.

http://cascadeclimbers.com/forum/ubbthreads.php/topics/1019769/7/Mt_Hood

gavastik, i'm no skiing expert but i've slogged the southside a lot. I took the clusterfuckery picture and had my skis with me carried up from leutholds. if the chute was in good shape were were going to ski it, but it was still pretty firm and also torn up to shit by all the climbers. That said there are a few good spots 'nearly' at the top of the old chute but a little to the west where one can have a bit of a flat platform to put your skis on and be out of the way. From what I could tell it looked like the gully off the west crater rim (west side of crater rock) was now melted/exposed down to bare ground which otherwise i know to be a good ski down keeping clear of the hoards. If that is the case even if you donned your skis a bit out of the way, you'd have to be cutting back to the hogsback and dealing with at least some aspect of climbers if you wanted to stay on snow. that said with snow conditions, etc---yes most get an alpine start. you can generally bet on the trend that high freezing level + sun = ice and rock fall. However sometimes I can't make rhyme or reason of it. I've been up there on sunny days with high freezing level and it has been fine. Then up there on other days when things seem like they are falling apart and I wouldn't have expected that. I do think that as summer rolls around, once the rime comes off all the rock up there you really start to get a progressive increase in shit coming down. I don't think it would be unfeasible to go for the later start honestly. If anything it would weed out the hordes quite a bit and hopefully mean the snow is good for skiing. everything is a bet and a guess you just gotta play it for what you think and keep an eye on the conditions/temps. later start = better for skiing, but might be worse if your number one goal is to top out. enjoy

might be. but after going 2 for 3 on north over a few years, i think it is best (by that I mean..fastest) when it is dry and you can plan on no snow (no ice ax, no crampons). Later in the summer being better for that. but ive had fun both ways

it is a low snow year this year. things are melting. been warm and rainy. The traverse is probably still got some snow in june, but less than normal. and bowling alley will be clear. highly doubt the top be a solid block of ice in june with the weather patterns we've had thus far. also look into access--pole creek way is closed until opened by the FS due to fire last year.

saw a report from a few weeks ago i thought. could be wrong. anyways as of end of april the FS said you could nearly drive to the TH...

ptown climber---i'd seen you mention looking at the spur earlier in the week and wondered--that idea tempted me. But then with the high freeze levels.. If it is any consolation I went over to the east slope of hood there and touched the snow a bit there near the summit. It was horribly wet and post-holy around 9am... not the case over on the west side--those 3hrs of sun did it in. Maybe it firmed up over night up higher like we saw above the hourglass but yeah, not sure you entirely missed out on that route at least--esp for descending would have been a real puckerfest.

Matt M/Water: Notes- to clarify the term 'ice tools', we mean just a 'second tool'. skinning was great up to Ill-saddle. Illupoopinsaddle has plenty of poop bombs around, so mind your feet and rope. Even with weather being what it was I left the parking lot in a tshirt all the way up palmer at 2am. Friday had been warm and Saturday was too, starting with the cloud cover and not much wind, esp on the West side of the mountain (contrary to forecasts). However the only movement of rock/ice I saw was tiny bits of snow/ice kicked by other climbers. Otherwise seems like the mountain has molted out of its winter shell and sent everything down. However there were clear signs even in just a moderate slope above the hourglass that wet slide activity had happened on Friday. I'm inclined to think Saturday afternoon would be the same, a pinwheel bowling alley, icefall, postholing mess? But in the AM things were calm, clear, and stable, even if it was above freezing. the hourglass area was a ton of fun, definitely the highlight of the day. a few fun moves also getting in and out of the ~5ft deep runnels that had vertical walls the reid traverse was in nasty shape with a 2inch~ breakable crust and rotten snow underneath, made for slow going. skinning this would have been better, but two in our group were sans skis. As Major Major said the debris fields were more compacted and easier to travel on. there are a few obvious bergschrund spots that are open and can be avoided but I think the debris fields have filled in other sections pretty well. If the weather lays down some more snow at say 9,000 and above maybe it would neaten things up, but, the mountain was starting to look pretty brown'tinged and gross. After we got down I felt like I wanted to say 'stick a fork in it', Hood is done (for me at least). Was happy to ski down but have definitely had better snow.. sticky, slow, tracked to hell. haven't been a barrage of hood pics in a while so I'll do the honors of recapping a lot of old hat: below the hour glass, wetslide runnels, nasty Illumination Rock and sun winding through the hourglass above the hourglass upper yocum ridge looking back down from near queens chair Cathedral Spire ice fall clusterfuckery drink up bitches!!! cocaine cookies:

Lincoln an idea for an investigative report might be to dig into the details of the private non-profit Mount St. Helens Institute siphoning off $65,000-85,000 each year in funds from the public to access a public resource, without providing a single service to climbers or skiers. Permit is $22 Forest service gets $15. They are also responsible for the mountain. $2 goes to the online system of the permit process and mailing the little piece of tyvek paper to you. $5 is a mandatory donation Mt. St. Helens Institute. (previous version of MSHI website have called it a donation, they have now scrubbed their site to call it a service fee). They make $65,000-85,000 a year off of this and provide no public accountability to how that money is specifically used. A total racket!

If you are wondering about cascade lakes hwy going past bachelor, I read that it was scheduled to open on Wednesday may 8th. So if that isn't indicative of a low snow year...get after it pronto! Late June will be too late.

woot woot! been a while since you had a TR up! thanks for the report

i'm guessing they'll do work in june? though if this weather continues late may if we're lucky? thats my guess but i don't have more info. could email klsandusky@fs.fed.us (Ken Sandusky) as he is the point person on the closure. likewise can you relay any info about pole creek opening up to us northerners? thanks

been pretty good... went up today. skied from the hogs at 11 or so.. SE slopes soft enough to be fun, S and SW still not quite there but plenty manageable. hope the weather holds for your arrival. few paragliders today as well, fun to watch. guy who came up cooper spur said it was great conditions, but descending at 9am things were already balling up a bit (removing crampons solved that).