Mt. Hood Summer Fun
We pulled into the parking lot at Timberline Lodge on a hot August day. It was 95 in Eugene when we left, and there was a warm wind blowing south over the summit on a clear night. As we laid out our bags for a short evening snooze before starting up at 1:00 am, the members of the party thought the scene was a little silly. We could here several kids playing on a snowbank by the Lodge, so there wouldn't be much shut-eye. Well, that was just part of the adventure.

"The moon and stars afforded us nice visibility for the trek up the snowfield toward Illumination Rock..."

Once we arose and got started, we saw that it was a beautiful night for climbing. The moon and stars afforded us nice visibility for the trek up the snowfield toward Illumination Rock. We made it there around 6:00, but noticed that the wind had picked up a strong sulfur odor. That was enough to send one of our party behind the rock for a little relief, and he decided to sit out the summit assault and follow the skiers later back down the snowfield to the Lodge.

The other 5 in our party headed through the notch and traversed the glacier to our southwest variation route. The fun began as we put on crampons and then went for a little front point action going down and up a little chute. We were about 400 yards up the ramp when the whole side of the face across from us peeled off and douched out the chute with about 10,000 yards of snow, rock and dirt. We all breathed a sigh of relief and were glad we'd come through 20 minutes earlier. With that motivation, we sprinted up to the summit, took in a great view from Rainier down to the central Oregon peaks and had a careful descent on rapidly softening snow. We were all glad to live to tell the tale.

Long's Peak
Two guys got caught up on Long's Peak during some nasty weather and had to make a quick bivouac with the barest of essentials. The combination of wet and cold was more than their lightweight equipment could handle, so they began to drift into the hypothermia-induced world of hallucinations.

When the weather began to clear,a search party spotted them and came up to take them to safety. The two guys thought they had died, and that the search party was really the devil's minions coming to snatch them off to the netherworld. They resisted by rolling rocks down toward the party and yelling their heads off. Ultimately, cooler heads prevailed, and took a detour to get close enough to the guys to convince them that all really was well. (I heard this story during the Hood ascent, and thought you'd enjoy it)

-- By Loren Houchen, Mountain Zone Pubster