[TR] Mt Hood - Cathedral Ridge (via bike approach) 06/22/2019

[tylerhs01]

Trip: Mt Hood - Cathedral Ridge (via bike approach)

Trip Date: 06/22/2019

Trip Report:

 

Ever since I encountered this excellent-looking bike ride on the interwebs, I've been scheming to combo it with a climb of Hood.

 

http://bestrides.org/lolo-pass-back-road/

I left the town of Zigzag (at a painfully low 1500 ft elevation) on my bike at 4:30am, and began the ascent up to the trailhead via FR 1828. The pitch was quite reasonable, I was worried about the bike ride with all my gear, but after popping it in my lowest gear I was able to putter up without too much effort. I reached the trailhead around 6am and began the hike up Timberline trail. 

Pretty fantastic misty-light-through-trees action on the way up.

I downloaded a trip report of Cathedral Ridge onto my phone, but hadn't started reading it until I got up to McNeil shelter. The TR made it seem quite convoluted and exciting, which gave me a bit of pause since I was just going up solo in my approach shoes. 

The route turned out to be quite straightforward though. Between 7400 and 8800 it stays more climber's left of the ridge, and ducks right of the ridge around a big cliffband at 9200. At least the way I did it. I took crampons on & off a few times when nice snow slopes appeared, but I encountered nothing steeper than 40 degrees. And it probably goes without saying, but the rock was pretty shitty and loose. 

I summitted around 11am, and saw my first humans of the day. 

Largely uneventful on the descent, other than a few exhilarating glissade runs. 

The road surface on FR 1828 was a bit iffy, so I instead descended East Lolo Pass Rd, which just consisted of open straightaways at relatively mellow grades.

I was really psyched on this trip! Really cool part of the mountain, although this was my first time up Hood so I can't really compare.

Route:

Gear Notes:
Ice axe, crampons, bike

Approach Notes:
Zigzag --> Timberline trail

Edited June 24, 2019 by tylerhs01

[jrex]

Great line.  Would you say that line would be good to go most of the summer or is the snow needed? 

[ScaredSilly]

Very nice and way to do something different.

[tylerhs01]

21 hours ago, jrex said:

Great line.  Would you say that line would be good to go most of the summer or is the snow needed? 

I reckon it would go all year, it would just get more tedious with all the loose talus. I ducked around one crevasse near the top, but I think it would be fine for a while.