[TR] Mt. Hood- Coconut Cookie Crumble (Ore-gone's own Triple Cs!) 10/28/2004

[ivan]

Climb: Mt. Hood-Coconut Cookie Crumble (Ore-gone's own Triple Cs!)

 

Date of Climb: 10/28/2004

 

Trip Report:

shredmaximus n' meself, being full of a healthy disrespect for productive employment, were to attempt the north face of hood y-day morning. this leads me to:

NORTH FACE OF HOOD UPDATE:

1. sorry suckas, the road's gone! we drove to about marker 12, then had to snowshoe it from there. after this next storm cycle, i most imagine they'll gate it down lower. the last few miles of the road we drove, the tracks were so deep we were dragging the bottom.

2. as the pix show, all the gullies are in and covered in snow. most of the snow we encountered was very powdery and not adhering to the choss at all. no evidence of big avies at the gully bottoms, so i guess they're still building up. from the spur at day's end we did see a humongous spindrift slide pouring over a portion of the left gully though (i was so tired and -adled i thought i was hallucinating at first).

 

the story:

after consulting the weather-lords and ruminating on the recent conditions up in the hills, we thought it very likely that thursday would be the best day for getting dem fine, fine n face conditions. at first shred n' i looked to be joined by 2 other teams for a true cc.com flava-o-da-month-clusta-fuck-fest, but as it turned out, 1 decided not to, and the other, after seeing the depth of the snow down low on the hill, noting the relatively warm temps, and consulting their pagan dice, drove back round to the south side for sum wy-east fun.

 

we headed up the trail in the dark 'roudn 130. the snow was everywhere deep and soft, and we set a new anti-howwit record for slowest ascent of the mountain ever. by the time we were in the vicinity of the n face gullies, we decided to change our objective, given the slow snow, the lack of a brain-bucket on my part, and the evidence of a storm to come in the early afternoon.

 

we decided to climb one of the ice lines up to the spur, then maybe summit from there. we chose the line in the pic that connects directly upward to tie-in rock. as i still have no guide to the climbs in that vicinity, and i like naming shit that i have no right to name, we decided to call this one coconut cookie crumble, as the rock climbing/mixed portion of the climb was powder over unfrozen mud that disintegrated under picks n' points. (coconut slurpee is the other line that connects to the spur in the photo, to the right of tie-in rock)

 

the climb had all the qualties i've come to expect from a good ice climb, namely: sheer terror and evoking littanies of profanity during the leads

 

pat climbed pitch 1, about 50 meters to just below the rock band. very steep for the first 15 meters of so, then cruising all the way to the belay w/ one more short ice step. ice varied from sound to shit, w/ an uncomfy amount of unsupportive snow. no pro for pat at the crux! i lead the short second pitch which made up in unprotectable, unnerving, choss-ful exposure what it lacked in enjoyable ice. i climbed crumbly rock first right, then back left of the belay, ending up only 30 meters of so above pat on steep snow. pat no doubt was pleased by the incessant hammer-blows of snow and rock i cast down in my own operatic fearful search for holds that didn't turn to powder when squeezed or scraped. in gore-tex, w/ tools dangling from wrists and spindrift pouring over my unhelmeted head in the fall chill, i enjoyed practicing all those skills of laybacking and stemming i'd developed on warm rock in shorts n' t-shirt this summer

 

we finished by traversing over to the spur below tie-in rock, where the day had grown late enough that the storm had materialized. we ditched the summit, enjoyed ourselves as only cravenly-hedonist climbers can, and walked down the spur in white-out and snow.

as always, all props to the man w/ the cam for suffering the slow and the verbose

[ivan]

as a late postscript, we saw an amazing ice climb, about 3 pitches, left of our climb. teh 2nd pitch involved overhanging ice, but might be skirted on the right. it connects to the spur. sorry no pix. go get it and post a tr.

[kurthicks]

good times Ivan. We pretty much lost motivation after getting stuck and with the conditions as they were, so we did a little skiing on the south side. the conditions were totally different, lots of icy snow and good cramponing. beautiful night though, full moon and no wind. nice pics

[Hanger]

Bad ass home boyz!!

 

good times...good times

 

 

whilst you were out there...i was here...slavin to the man...until just after 10:30 p.m. (read: 16 forkin hours!)

[Ireneo_Funes]

Nice pictures, guys. Kinda makes me want to climb in the snow again.

[ivan]

I think this was the one you are talking about (on right).

yup, that's it. can't see that super scary middle section too well though.

[Chad_A]

Nice TR

 

FYI, we drove up there today to take a look at things. The snow seemed like it would be kinda sugary. Nice that you found some ice to climb! We re-broke trail up to the split between Cloud Cap and Tilly Jane, and parked there. Soon after, another gent in a Blazer (prolly a Crag Rat) stopped to say hi, and continued breaking trail up the the parking lot. So, as of today, it will be open to 4WD vehicles, but I guess it's supposed to snow up there some more, so it might indeed be gone. Here's a pic of the road, and of the NF in the early afternoon. Man, the wind was WHIPPING up there today. Ice pellets never hurt like that before.

 

 

[ivan]

there was no shortage of ice along the cooper spur, as your pic testifies

 

i love how you can see the faqh'n wind nuking in that pic on the spur; the walk down it was fantastic w/ the wind drifts n' cornices already blasted on - sinking into waist deep powder was a bit exasperating though

[Chad_A]

Wish I would've known about the WI. I had a gent with me that I'm sure would've been psyched to follow me up some. Can you point out which line you did? I have some time off this coming week, and I wouldn't mind grunting up some ice.

 

We saw your descent tracks. I thought you might've summitted until I saw them; good job on finding something else to do : How was the wind down on the Eliot?

[ivan]

wouldava liked to summited, but undeniably the right call. i got the most out of my day (cough, cough) sick as i could want.

 

so here's what i've done, not including a mystery line i still can't locate w/ rbw'66 2 falls ago. the route i'd encourage a hard man to get after is not visible off to the left of the picture

[Chad_A]

Man, makes me want to get out the tools. I'll find something to play on this coming week!

[OlegV]

I spent a miserable night just below the Eliot Glacier yesterday night. What a drug! The entire trip was a disaster. My Subaru got stack in a snow twice. I was lucky to dig it out, somehow. I had to park on a side of the road and hike up to a trail head for a quoter of a mile. By the time I got on a ridge it was 7 PM and the weather got worse. I got down to the base of Eliot at 8 PM and tried to set up a base camp in a snow dip. My tent was like a parachute. I ended up leaving this idea, and dagged a small cave and put myself into state of hibernation for about an hour. I did not have a bivy and only had 20 C sleeping bag. Not being too happy in my shelter, I had to retrieve at midnight in storm and spent a few hours in a car. A couple of climbers passes me around 1AM asking if I need any help. I drove back at 2 AM.

[ivan]

what were you planning on doing up there, oleg-me-boy? you sound as if you could use some lessons from milosh!

[OlegV]

You are right Ivan, Milosh would know how not to freeze his ass of even at 100 mile/h wind without a tent. I kind off ignored this lenticular thing on the top of the mountain at sunset. I didn't expect the weather to turn so bad at night. Base camping on Eliot in high wind was an absurd idea. I was gonna do the Sunshine route anyway. Last weekend I had to turn around at Anderson rock because of a total whiteout.

[ivan]

milosh would have constructed a wind proof thermal sealing bivy sack w/ only his titanium boxer shorts and a couple of pubic hairs, cocooned himself inside, then blissfully wiled away the hours waiting for the storm to subside by contemplating the meaning of hate-fuck

[Chriznitch]

nice pictures. I can't believe all the blue sky that was up there!

[jaee]

Any conjecture on the road conditions? Any chance the road is still passable?

[ivan]

you got a humvee? it's pouring out my window now and i think the forecast today was for 8 inches, starting at 4500 feet. that makes me think that the road's gonna be impassable much lower then it was last week, but then i'm a screaming nancy-girl.

 

still, i reckon the skiing oughta be sweet. maybe see a big slide come down the n face while you're up there?

[jaee]

T-line reports 1 inch new with a 9 inch decrease in base. To me that means there's probably less snow cover on the road than before, although it may be pretty slick. Pure speculation at this point.

[ryland_moore]

I drove over 26 Monday and Tuesday night. Monday was really warm and most snow had melted. It was raining hard. Tuesday, more of the same with a lot of rain, but by 5 pm Tuesday, it was snowing hard. Not sure how long it lasted. Sounded like small accumulations.