[TR] Der Hood-Wand - Luethold's Little Coulior'a'Kix ePiC! 11/24/2007

[ivan]

Trip: Der Hood-Wand - Luethold's Little Coulior'a'Kix ePiC!

 

Date: 11/24/2007

 

Trip Report:

did some Xtreme camping at illum-gap on friday w/ a newbie - i'll climb w/ anyone who, upon waking at 2 AM to take a leak returns into the tent w/ a friendly "wanna burn one?"

 

left saturday morning to climb luetholds under an overcast sky - snow conditions down on the reid are heidously deep and the first 1/4 of the couloir blew rhinos until finally becoming good scoured styrofoam - the typical minor rime chunkage poured down w/ the occasional heavy artillery mixed in - ken, who i think is probably going to suffer some serious PTSD after this whole experience, was climbing only his second volcano after the even more intimidating adams-wand, and was working on his own version of ww2 (french vs german technique, w/ the krauts winning too damn much), which slowed him considerably. i roped him through the hourglass, which has a real fun section of alpine ice currently.

 

while belayign him above i noticed rapid wisps of cloud carrying snow coming up from the lowlands, obscuring visibility down low, and rising. by the time we were just a hundred feet below cathedral we were in high winds and whiteout - i didn't relish the thought of trying to get him to downclimb the coulior again, so we battled on up to the summit ridge, totally clad in growing rime - which offered the shittiest vision, my ice-particle blasted naked eyes or my jedi-trainer-simulation iced-out goggles? couldn't help but think of those poor bastards who topped out in a such a storm last year about the same time and didn't know how to get off.

 

it was very bizarre feeling my way down the old-chute descent w/o seeing a single landmark - verrrry deep powder, a creepy feeling and i thought i hard a loud crack at one point but what the hell else was there to do? the hogsback appeared just as i stumbled over it. i was sure there had to be a boot-track, given the # of folks i'd seen headed up that way on friday, but it was completly invisible or destroyed by storm and fog. goddamn i love altimeters - did the entire traverse from below crater rock back to illum gap w/ no references at all but w/ my watch i hit the tent perfectly. ken was bad freaked n' shaken - i think he might be done w/ the whole "mountaineering is kewl" thang. don't know that i could blame him - the only sketchier descent i could remember having done was w/ iain on a very cold halloween years before...

 

the storm showed no signs of abating, and totally soaked and covered in snow the tent was not nearly so pleasant as i'd wanted - it was 2 PM and staying the night wasn't an option w/ no fuel left and a divorce practically assured if i didn't get back by 7. we busted down camp in the howling soup - ken's foam pad, left unsecured for a brief second took off in the direction of the summit at 900 mph. woulda loved to have policed up the mother-of-all turds i'd left right before leaving that morning, but the mountain had claimed it by covering it in a foot of new powder. sorry future illum-campers! we stayed roped for the traverse back to the palmer lifts, which eventually began to appear below the clouds as we descended. the ski slopes were lifeless, a stark contrast to all the gnarly 15 year olds who'd been shred'n'da'shit the day before.

 

gotta love how hood can remain a challenge after a gazillion ascents, and how the experience of as many climbs can maintain confidence in trying conditions!

[Sherri]

Wow, Ivan. That sounded like a hairy expedition!

 

You know mountaineering is serious biz when you have to choose between death and divorce...

[jclements]

Mountaineering IS kewl! "It doesn't have to be fun to be fun." Nicely done.

[shortstow]

i have some pics from 2 days before when the weather was still good. I will get them up tonight

[OrygunJim]

I remember looking back on the way down from the crater at noon thinking "damn, those clouds are closing fast". By the time I reached the parking lot, 1/3 of the mountain had disappeared and Palmer was a ghost town. Serious weather, seriously fast.

[Frikadeller]

Just another quick reminder of how fast the weather can change in them thar hills.

 

 

I was gonna skin up to hogsback in that morning, but my pussy ass was too hung over from going out to see the Dwarves downtown the night before. Glad I did not go after all...

[sweatinoutliquor]

to you ivan and ken. Good story as usual, and way to keep it together when the shit hits. Sounds like quite an adventure!

 

 

[ClimbingPanther]

as always, a great read, ivan!

i heart altimeters too.

[OlegV]

eric, you should seriously consider publishing your stories. jim wickwire's writing style is nothing compared to yours. i am serious! american people need more mental and physical gymnastics - as they get excessively bored in front of their mile-wide TVs, they may think of the world as a much wider and challenging place. go to publishing business, don’t waste your time in “high” school!

 

i still wonder why those poor guys couldn't get off the summit last year. feels like a collective suicide to me.. one can jump off the summit into the old chute variation slope and self arrest himself. it doesn't get steeper than 45 degrees. bad call.

 

[ivan]

2 weeks later, only 1 memory of this climb remains for me - the 8 pound thanksgiving sandwhich i hauled up to illumination for me dinner (a whole loaf of french bread w/ alternating layers of turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes and gravy - christ, i'm drooling just thinking on it!), plus the bottle of merlot and exactly 3 smokes i brought along to chase it down to my mind, that is precisely the difference between alpinism and mountaineering, and gawddamn, mountaineering has it's place!

[jlag]

Damn dude, i've got to get out and climb with you again. Sounds like my type of climb.

 

Have you thought of maybe doing some sort of guided "party climbing"? I think it would be a hit.

 

JL

[rbw1966]

What? No smoking out with a ranger?

[ivan]

 

Have you thought of maybe doing some sort of guided "party climbing"? I think it would be a hit.

 

JL

no way i'm sharing my camels or my sammy!

[ivan]

poor ethics indeed to multi-tr the same goddamn route, so thought i might add a few thoughts to this here old'un and wistfully wonder where are the kens of yesteryear?

 

first saturday of sun for fucks sake in many a fortnight it seemed - plans kicked about for months on end w/ several fools, idealy for a n face climb - the mighty mitochondria, a svelte slav, not half my stature i'll wager, the driving force - the wife understandably leary of letting a rare piece of prime rib such as myself out by my lonesome w/ a lady, i'd worked to get beaconben or whoever into the mix but in the end it was this weekend or nothign really, and not a real man to be found...sigh. even our mutual miscreant, olegv, was deep in the downward spirals of a moscow mind-fuck, dead to the world it seemed, bumptious and billious.

 

decided to reduce the plan to a single day - i'm too fat and lazy to enjoy the n side w/o spending a night out, so why not poke about the sandy? maybe the upper bit of yocums? hell...i'll be impressed if i can even get my ass packed and motivated out the door

 

renaming anastasia "cop magnet" 'cuz twice in twenty minutes she had the fuzz crawling all over us, angry cop probocis out and probing feverishly - pulled into the p-lot in gresham, head screwed on nice and tight after an hour nap and a few big breaths, to see the po-po dismounted and flashlight equipped, grilling poor-girl on why she was staking out a closed-up starbucks at a stroke past midnight, sitting there in her slick ride - now a man w/ a headfull of half-baked crazy has little sense throwing himself into such a fray, but i felt a bit responsible for having picked out the rendezovous so i parked a discrete bit away and shayshayed on over, hands in plain sight, to shoot the cop some shit - he didn't seem too amused, but agreed to fuck off straight away and so off we sped a few minutes later all set to see what we could do with the hood-wand

 

a couple minutes later, lashing through the interstellar wastelands between sandy and fuck-knows oregon, chattering away in her heathen english, "cop magnet" had a fast mover come ranging right up on her, tail-gating big time - i was just finish a stoogie, so thought it only proper to flick off the cherry into the slipstream and give homeboy a shot across the bow - yeah, a few nano-seconds later a galaxy of coplights glittered on up, and not half a minute after that we're on the side of the road in a comic state of searching for licenses, registrations, excuses, and jesus-fuck, a way to roll the goddamn window down? home-slice was on the verge of giving poor old anasatsia the ticket to sack her license once and for all and smug old me an even bigger one for having the audacity to eject flaming material out the ride in the depths of spring (i had the butt still in my rukers though!), but fortune felt some fool not far off needed to threaten to kill hisself, and so he gave us The Big Riot Act and then raced off, leaving a couple inches of fresh rubber on the road, in the right goddamn direction to relieve us for some time

 

so there we were in the stillness of timberline at 1 fucking a.m., fucking hordes of hood-aspirants in all directions like radioactive flies on frigid whores - we packed up fast enough and in the cave started what would be a theme for the day, meeting a half-dozen folks who cop-magnet knew, and who all somehow knew me through the miracles of the intrewubs

 

slow, slow, slow i was on that saunter up the palmer - couldn't help but compare anastasia's rhode-island sized pack to the dakota-ish dimensions of my own - excuses, excuses - at least she'd thrown in some non-russian smokes to my load to counterbalance the 2 lbs of half-cooked bacon i'd brought along - good dog that i am, she afforded me a sit-down for a few seconds at the palmer top to suck down a cig and 2 cups of honey-tea while she jousted w/ KK in their pidgin tongues

i continued the trend of the day, lagging behind the lady as she raced mountie hordes in the half-growing light to i-rock - i was locked all day in a deep zombie-funk, trodding half asleep or more, too tired even to listen to music proper - had meant to figure out a way to nap before the late night launch but somehow it never worked out?

 

one groggy bastard cowed under castle crag

we lit off, a bit behind the mounties who were well ahead on luetholds and a party reid-bound

yeah, that about sums it up

we went off around yocums to see how the sandy looked, but not too far along the traverse 'stasia stopped digging how her tools had no decent spike for plunging and i started feeling The Fear that i'd lose gas far from home

 

don't know quite how to untilt this'un, at the start of the traverse low down on yocum

we decided to just wander up luetholds to the hourglass, and check out the upper buttress of yocums

stare at feet, stumble-fuck further

paused to catch our breath by the hourglass - could easily have had a phine phat nap here

ice bandsaws!

snow was shitty and post-holish, the hour was later than wanted, and generally the energy lacking for messing w/ yocum, so we settled for sauntering up the rest of luetholds - easyish snow, hardly any ice, a bit of styrofoam here and there

jesus christ i forgot how much stumbling there is to be done above the hour-glass! cop-magnet shot well ahead and i slooooooowed on down some more

 

as i broke into the sun i broke out my sunglasses and strait-off dropped the wife's cell phone, which shot off like a pissed off pelican - forutnately for my maritial relationship i was able to downclimb to retrive the 3 pieces it fractured into, and here came on back up

i'd rather forget the rest - shuffle-fuck up cathedral - great views and dim wind - pretty, pretty crystals everywhere - saunter off to the summit - holy shit it was cold up there!

 

one wee, one not so wee, and one frigging huge

the descents always the best - giggle-fits and fuck-all laughter, lounging about the hogsback and points below - strung together several quick naps, waking w/ numb hands and drool-soaked gloves - met more than a few folks who knew our brave summit team - shits and sheenanigins - sunshine scorching 'stasia's face - dalliances w/ dharmabum - hollering hillbilly fuckall folktunes

 

back in the lot - jesus-god, is that oleg? rumors and ruminations - mt hood food - beer w/ beacon on it - russian caviar - machinations - the slow boat home - escape velocity acheived - home - sleeeeeeep!

Edited April 26, 2011 by ivan

[stevetimetravlr]

Holy sheepshit thats a great TR!

[jon]

Hey Ivan, please put this in a new TR if you can as people do look by date for conditions. We also will be doing some changes to the TR system where it's better for TRs to be separate.

[KaskadskyjKozak]

 

It was a pleasure finally meeting the great Ivan, although, based on your stature, I will consider you more as a Piotr Velikiy than an Ivan Groznyj in my mind henceforth.

 

 

[ivan]

Hey Ivan, please put this in a new TR if you can as people do look by date for conditions. We also will be doing some changes to the TR system where it's better for TRs to be separate.

anything to pad my tr lead

[ivan]

I will consider you more as a Piotr Velikiy than an Ivan Groznyj in my mind henceforth.

 

i do have his height and weight about right, but goddamn i wish i had his tolerance