[TR] Tour de Hood 3/13/2004

[iain]

Climb: Tour de Hood-Sunshine, eventually

 

Date of Climb: 3/13/2004

 

Trip Report:

The enigmatic Hal Burton and I started from Timberline a little after midnight. We skied around the east side. The crossing of WR Canyon right now is quite easy up high. We skied across Newton-Clark Glacier and down Cooper Spur a bit. We took a nap there, since it was still before 0400 and it was really dark down on the Eliot Glacier. Didn't really want to launch down there w/ the headlamp. We did a long traverse over to the north face gully entrances, our first intended destination. While the gullies look to be give-aways right now, the start is not. Surprisingly, the bergschrund is impassable w/o some motivated acrobatics, perhaps on the right side.

 

Here's the best spot to cross right now, taken from west of the bergschrund:

 

 

You could cross high from Cooper Spur, but then you are missing one of the best parts of the route. I was surprised to see that what was easy to cross back in Nov. is now a yawning monster. So we were relegated to climbing Sunshine, perhaps a little happy to not climb the gullies with our skis, but disappointed we could not take the expressway to the summit directly.

 

Here is the Eliot Headwall, and Hal Burton at an undisclosed location on the north side:

 

 

The climbing was rather tedious, but conditions are quite good over there. We were all alone for the entire trip, until we exited at the queen's chair to Wally World. I've never seen that many people coming out of Leuthold's. Hey, and ZERO tracks on the upper headwall of Yocum, what's up?

 

We proceeded up the summit ridge to our turnoff to the Mazama Chute:

 

 

We sat there for quite awhile getting rained on by debris from the Leuthold juggarnaut, waiting for the bowling pins below to plod there way up so we didn't shell them with the rime skiing we were about to commence. Note human pack train on the hogsback. I did not realize RMI had a permit. Skiing conditions were truly abysmal. The top of the chute (what am I talking about, the whole thing) was quite icy and had a spicy 3-D texture to it. Much sideslipping ensued. Back at the car maybe a bit before 1300, with a few hours of dinking around on the north side.

[Alpinfox]

 

Nice iain.

[cluck]

Holy shit. Circumnavigate the mountain and then climb up from the north side. That's one way to do it!

[Sabertooth]

Nice trip report. That's a lot of ground to cover, you guys were moving pretty quickly. Was the North Face raining down ice particles?

[iain]

The gullies were silent and looked like a cakewalk if you could get across the schrund. It would be easy to dink around on the left and traverse in, but again, you're missing those low ice pitches, as it puts you in the trudge festival above them.

[Doug_Hutchinson]

Nice TR! We were the last party up Leutholds that day to attempt to ski it. Since the ski conditions looked heinous in the chuting gallery, we decided for the old chute ski descent as well. Waited until about 1300 for it to soften (never did and then the sky clouded over) and found your "truly abysmal" rating of the skiing to be too kind - fucking terrifyingly awful!

[billcoe]

Nice TR and pics to tell the tale too, thanks for sharing!

 

Bill