Mt Hood - East Crater Wall

I became lazy over the last year and ended up doing climbs instead of writing trip reports, so beware, this trip report is a recollection of a climb done a year ago.

 

I’m not much of a morning person, so alpine starts really hurt, but with the “cheating” aid of a snow cat ride to the top of Palmer Glacier that allowed us to leave around 2:30am, I couldn’t complain much, especially since the climbers hiking the bottom section had to suck down the snow cat fumes.  We ended up skinning up another 200-300ft or so past the top of the Palmer lift and ditching them when conditions got icy (split boards are great, but I still have a hard time holding an edge on ice when skinning).  After some very easy and brisk hiking, we reached Devil’s Kitchen.  Being it was early and I had never been up Hood before, as we approached Devil’s Kitchen I could have swore that someone in our group had some horrendous gas; the aroma of Devil’s Kitchen definitely doesn’t remind me of anything Mom used to make, and I hope it doesn’t for anybody, for their sake. 

 

At Devil’s Kitchen, we dawned harnesses and roped up for the actual climb.  We headed up immediately right of Devil’s Kitchen up some scree glued down by ice and small amounts of snow.  This was fairly easy hiking with a short stumble when rocks became unglued.  Eventually we reached snow slopes that increased in steepness, but still mild steepness.  We headed up this for ~100ft until we reached a headwall, where I was thankful I was not leading.  The route steepened to approximately 60° of fluffy snow encrusted with a thin layer of rime ice.  Beware, this ice may attack back; the leader of our rope team got a nice split in his lip from “ice” breaking free on this section.  Approximately 50ft of climbing allowed us to gain the ridge and join up with the Wy’east route.

Date: June 8, 2008

There Is No Someday

After reaching the ridge, we traversed easy ground for awhile until we hit another steep section.  We headed up slope for ~45ft and traversed right over steeper sections until we reached a fairly long steep snow slope that was very soft.  We headed up this, staying somewhat close to the rock bands.  Since I was on the end of the rope, I got the extra pleasure of seeing an increasing amount of rocks falling from the cliffs above my head. 

Section after scree on headwall

60º climb heads up to climber’s right

Right traverse over steeper sections

Steep slope after traverse (pic taken from above)

The remainder of the climb went across gentle ground on the ridge until reaching the summit shortly afterwards.  We descended the Old Chute (normal route for 2008) back down to our split boards and glided down through slush and mush back to the car.  All in all, this route does not see much traffic and current conditions might be hard to come by, especially since one of the team’s memory of the route was much different than his experience on it this time.  I would highly recommend this route if the rime ice over sugar doesn’t bother you; on a crowded day on the mountain, no other teams were on this route and we did not see anybody from the crater rim to the summit.

East Crater Wall section

Wy’east section