Category: Mt Hood

I met Todd at 7:30 in the Timberline parking lot and we headed up for some lift served turns. Given all the hiking we’d been doing lately, it was nice to get some lift riding in. It had snowed down to about 6500 feet overnight, and there was a little wind sift on the east side of the Palmer that measured several inches in places. By doing a power slide, I could actually get the fresh stuff up in my face. The cold smoke hitting my warm face was like a dream.

The snow corned by about 10:00 and fog drifted in about 11:30. Here’s a shot looking down towards the lodge at about 9:00……..

We climbed out towards the White River Glacier for a rest and some GU, and admired the large ice field complex. It looks good for some climbing, but the seracs are big and most likely unstable. Several more runs followed, and we got several thousand vertical feet of riding in for the day.

We quit riding around noon, and headed down to the Ratskellar in Government Camp, where the Monkey Face Porter hit the spot. You can ride down to within about 200 yards of the lodge. I’m amazed at the coverage up there still. The Zigzag Glacier looks decent, and might be worth the hike. Get out and enjoy it while it’s good. It won’t be too long now until winter returns!

Since the majority of October was blown away studying for my professional engineering exam (which was Friday the 27th), and there was only a few days to get turns in, Todd and I decided to head up to the Palmer Glacier on Hood for our turns, given that I can’t think of any other place in Oregon that would be worth riding due to the snow conditions. There was some pretty serious lack of snow on the Palmer, but it was still plenty rideable. The weather was perfect with sunshine all day. At first, I wished I had brought my long board as the snow was rock hard ice and I was having to speed check constantly. Fortunately, by about 10:00am it softened up nicely and we made several runs (so many I lost count). Hero snow followed until about 2:00pm when we gave up. There was even a nice little tabletop jump we played on in the afternoon.

We finished the day down at Govy with a round of well earned Ice Axe IPA’s which always hit the spot. The weather forecast for the next week is pretty dry; I’m hoping we get some snow soon and have a good winter, because right now it’s really, really thin! Here’s a parting shot of Todd making a tele-turn down the snowfield….

Original plans of attending a glacier travel and crevasse rescue class with the Santiam Alpine Club and getting August turns on the Elliot Glacier were thwarted by forest fires and the closure of Hwy 35. Good thing there was  plenty of snow left for riding on the Palmer snowfield. After thinking it over, we decided on buying lift tickets to ride as much as possible for most of the day with the possibility of heading out to the Zigzag glacier in the afternoon. The snow was rock hard in the morning, but softened up nicely by about 9:30am. We never did get over to the Zigzag, as the lure of steady continuous vertical kept us on the Palmer. A few people were climbing to the summit, but we didn’t see anybody with skis descending from the Crater Rock area. The mountain pretty much cleared out by 12:00 and the last hour and a half we had it to ourselves. Lots and lots of vertical was had. I saw a high school friend splitting up the Magic Mile and Palmer – Kelly it was good to see you.