We left Timberline at about 2 pm. The sky was clear, but there was a lenticular cloud covering the top 2000 feet of the mountain, suggesting fairly enthusiastic winds. The snow was crusty and there were occasional patches of windblown spindrift, but we put the skins on the tele skis, hefted our uncharacteristically heavy packs (we are big fans of the Light and Fast Club) and began plodding.

"It was a return to our early mountaineering style of 'Be Prepared For The Worst, No Matter How Heavy The Load (Besides Which, We Need To Justify Owning All This Stuff)'..."

We planned on spending three days on Mt Hood. The plan was to ascend to Illumination Rock the first day, summit the second day, a side excursion later the second day, and then a little skiing and a descent the third day. We brought ice tools and crampons, snow shovels, ropes and harnesses, a four-season tent, bivy sacks and bags, food for four days, two stoves, extra clothing for three days, camera, head lamps, sun glasses and goggles, cell phone, GPS, map and compasses, coffee of course, a flask of 12-year old Scotch … basically we brought enough gear to last out a week long blizzard in comfort and still return safely home in style.

It was a return to our early mountaineering style of Be Prepared For The Worst, No Matter How Heavy The Load (Besides Which, We Need To Justify Owning All This Stuff). Those were the days of enthusiasm and naivete. These days we prefer to take the bare essentials and go light and fast, limiting our trips to 1 or 2 day excursions. Usually speed and mobility prevail over exposure and toil, an increasingly popular trend in mountaineering.

We soon began to regret our reversion as we slogged our way up the hill. Our estimated three hr trip was dragged out to over 5 hours as we slipped on ice patches that became more and more predominant. We reached the top of the Palmer Snowfield and removed our skis in exasperation and donned crampons. As we lugged our packs up the hill, we began to desperately regret having ever even heard of skis. On the other hand, a little bit of pre-season conditioning would have been nice, too.

By then it was dark. The lights from the Multorpor Ski Area several miles away provided enough illumination that we did not need our head lamps. The last hour is always the worst, and in the dim light it seemed as if we were never going to make it to Illumination Rock. At one point I left my pack with Bob and went scouting for a bivy site, to no avail. In the starlight, the looming bulk of the mountain made distance deceiving. When we finally made it to the crest of snow connecting Illumination Rock to the rest of the mountain, I was a little surprised. I didn't believe I had arrived until my feet were firmly planted on the flat surface of Illumination Saddle. I shouted in triumph, but the sound was carried away in the wind.

"Golfball-sized globs of rime ice completely covered the ground. The very idea of sleeping on such a surface made me ache..."

The wind was blowing steadily and the snow was icy and hard. Golfball-sized globs of rime ice completely covered the ground. The very idea of sleeping on such a surface made me ache. Taking my ice axe, I hacked at the ground wondering if perhaps we could scour out a level site and soften up the surface so that we could endure a night on the ground. It was hopeless. After a few minutes of flailing at the white pavement, I had a small hole scoured in the ground. On the hill above us I could see that the slope was smooth except for one spot that looked like some snow had tumbled off a rock. It looked a bit incongruous, so I heaved myself up there hoping to find a bivy site. There was a small hole. The amount of snow that had been excavated onto the slope below did not look sufficient to amount to a large snowcave...but oh joy of joys! It was a nicely made and perfectly-sized snowcave!

We gratefully collapsed into the cave and lay there for several minutes in exhaustion, too tired to even pull our packs inside. We owed somebody a beer. Eventually we got everything set up and began cooking dinner. Freeze-dried chicken/rice pilaf never tasted so good. By 8:00 pm we were ready for sleep. We stayed very warm and dry. In fact, we were so comfortable that we slept for 12 hours, a personal record for me, especially in the mountains.

I woke to sunlight pouring into the cave. It was warm and quite wonderful. I could hear a strange hum outside.

"Must be howling out there."

"I think it's blowing upstairs, but it's fine here," Bob corrected me.

I crawled out into a still morning lit by fantastic sunshine. 40 feet away was a trough between Illumination Rock and the the bulk of Castle Crags, a rime-encrusted ridge of rock towers that turned into the West Rim Crater higher up the mountain. The wind was wailing through the trough at 25+ mph. Had we attempted to set up the tent in that same spot last night, as we had intended to, we would have endured a very miserable night. Where I stood, mere feet away, there was not a breath of wind. It was one of those neat phenomena you only get to experience in the mountains.

After coffee, oatmeal, and refilling our water bottles, we geared up lightly, and set off for the summit. I wore a fanny pack and that was it. Bob carried only what would fit into his pockets. Without heavy packs on we felt light and fast. The transformation from yak to gazelle was wonderful. In the light of day it was obvious that this was a crampon and ice tool trip only. We should have left our skis behind. The entire peak was encased in rime. It had the hard, sparkling beauty that only mountains, and perhaps diamonds, possess.

"Looking at the crystalline slope, I imagined that being swept up in an avalanche here would certainly kill you long before the slope ever quit moving..."

We angled up into the crater on the south side of Castle Rock, up the old Mazamas Route. Underneath our very feet was the spot where an avalanche struck a guided group several months before, killing one man and sweeping several others down the hill in terror. Looking at the crystalline slope, I imagined that being swept up in an avalanche here would certainly kill you long before the slope ever quit moving. You would be bludgeoned to death long before you had the opportunity to enjoy a miserable death by suffocation. The slope felt as solid as granite, although fracture lines in the snow belied that appearance of solidity. Despite the low avalanche danger, I still felt better when we passed beyond Castle Rock and up into the crater below Hot Rocks.

Mt. Hood is an active, albeit dormant, volcano. In the bottom of the crater is an immense hole in the snow called the Devil's Kitchen. The fumaroles that spew steam and sulphured smoke into the air melt the snow and push up piles of mud and gravel. The stench of these fumaroles is likened to rotten eggs. The fumaroles are unpleasant scars in the snow, reeking reminders that deep below the mantle of rock and ice lies an incredible power. The dormant power of volcanoes is a modern day Midgaard Serpent waiting for destruction. Should the Serpent ever wake, or even shrug in his slumber, we would be helpless. If we were lucky, some archaeological team might find us in a thousand years and they would wonder what the hell we were doing up on an active volcano.

We climbed past the naked, steaming earth, trying not to breathe in the stench. The snow became soft and steep. The wind had loaded up the slope with loose snow and it looked avalanche-prone, so we climbed as close to the fumarole as we dared until we realized that that was the safest place for us. The muddy grit was only steaming lightly, and it was not hot, only warm, so we climbed up the expanse of bare earth for about 100 feet before we encountered ice.

The ice was about 40 degrees, and it consisted of golfball- to grapefruit-sized chunks of rime and verglas. It looked spooky, but it felt solid, and going up looked more appealing than going back down through the fumarole. As we ascended the ice, we decided that we would definitely descend via the Hogsback, a spine of snow that was the 'dog route'. It was not as steep, and from where we were, it looked to be made up of snow rather than ice. It was indeed a dog route - we could see another party below us starting up the Hogsback with their dog.

We were halfway up the icy face of the route when Bob commented that it wasn't so bad...providing you didn't look down. As I hadn't taken the time to do so, I made sure I was firmly positioned, and turned to look down behind me. The view was breathtaking. Had I been a member of the Vertigo Club, I would have become quite dizzy. As it was, the impression of height and danger was oddly euphoric.

"The last thing I wanted to do was eject my best friend to the void with a shower of carelessly handled ice..."

We topped out of the crater and were able to traverse along under towers of rime. The sense of danger shifted so that my perception of peril was now focused above, rather than below. The route led through a narrow climb through two towers of ice. The passage to the summit slopes was only two feet wide, so we carefully navigated the slot so as not to dislodge any ice. The last thing I wanted to do was eject my best friend to the void with a shower of carelessly handled ice.

The summit slopes were icy but not as bad as the crater. The wind was light and variable, and the sun was very warm. It felt like spring. As I crested the summit, January struck me with instant 30+ mph winds. The transition was startling. I crawled to the precipice and looked down over the Elliot and Coe glaciers thousands of feet below. Backcrawling to relative safety, I stood into the wind, careful to remain far enough from the edge so that an unexpected gust would not send me into freefall. I was able to lean into the wind and be supported. Bob took pictures of me for a minute or two before I began my descent to a more sheltered position. Summit glory is usually very shortlived unless the weather permits lounging. Today was no exception.

I moved off the 11,239' summit to a wind-sheltered spot some 100' below to wait for Bob to go get his summit. Tomorrow I turned 30. It was a good way to end my 20s.

We rested above the Pearly Gates, the rime towers that flank the route at the top of the Hogsback route. Soon the Dog Party came into view. I had doubts about a dog's ability to descend ice and snow since it's claws curved the wrong way. I needn't have worried. When we met the people, the leader introduced us to the dog, as well. It was a German Shorthair who, the owner assured us, had bagged many peaks, and could even climb 5.6 on rock, too! That pretty much settled it for me. I was getting a dog.

Going down the Hogsback was a cake walk. The weekend traffic of the days before had cut steps into the snowy spine of the route. It was almost as easy as going down a stairwell, except that the exposure was magnificent! Halfway down the Hogsback we met Terry. Terry looked to be about 60. He was moving very slowly, but steadily in the manner of people who have climbed mountains before. Speaking with him, we learned that just a few years ago, he had bagged 21 summits in a year! That year he began with a summit of Kilimanjaro. He began each new year with a summit, believing it was a bad omen otherwise. To summit a beautiful monument of rock and ice was good Karma for the rest of the year. Despite our deposit in the Karmic Bank, Bob and I felt much chagrined after meeting Terry.

"We suck," was all that Bob could say. I agreed. 21 peaks in a year seemed like a pipe dream until I realized that I had over 118 days of the year off. The possibilities began to bloom...

It is amazing how quickly one can descend a route that took hours to ascend. The route we took down was longer than the one we took up, but while the ascent required over two hours, we were back in the snowcave in less than one hour. We ate lunch and lounged around for awhile, talking about mountains and mountaineering. We vowed that this last year of the millenium would be utilized to the fullest.

Had there been snow, we would have spent the rest of the day skiing and stayed another night. Instead, we began to think of the brewery in Govt. Camp, a mere 7-8 miles away. I wondered how many of my descents had been lost to me, how much beauty had I missed in the preoccupation of thoughts of hot food, beer, (and Advil for my knees) at the bottom. If there were no brewery at the bottom, I might very well be persuaded to stay for days up there, like some ascetic monk, basking in the glory of...Mmmm, beeerrrrr...

Once again, the time up was compressed to about an hour. Carrying our heavy loads down the mountain was hell on my knees, and when we reached the groomed slopes of Timberline I was too trashed to ski the rest of the way. So we plodded on, dreaming of a nicely hopped pint (or two) of ale, and tales at the pub.

-- By Blake Robinson, Mountain Zone Pubster