Above the Clouds

We're back, and we successfully climbed to the summit of Mt. Hood on April 8, 2009! What an amazing end to our trip. But before I go into the climb, I'll back up to the day we left for Colorado.

We flew to Denver and had a relaxing drive in our Nissan Pathfinder to Keystone. Along the way, we stopped to view bighorn sheep in Georgetown, CO, and had a good lunch. We met up with Mike and Jen at the grocery store in Dillon, and we continued on to our condo at River Run in Keystone. As much as I wanted to hit the slopes, we waited out that day to get used to the altitude which was a great decision. That evening, we went to Loveland Pass and enjoyed the beauty of the 14ers.

Us at Loveland Pass

To our surprise, Keystone had quite a bit of fresh powder dumped on the mountain both Friday and Saturday mornings. What great timing we had! That was Kevin's first trip to the mountains and my first experience with powder skiing, and we both found it wonderful. Even skiing on the groomers on Sunday was great.

Monday we flew to Portland, Oregon, and drove up to Mt. Hood for a relaxing evening. Tuesday brought snow school, where our guide taught us how to use our steps, use ice axes and ropes, and self-arrest. We had fun sliding around in the snow that day, and it was a warm 77 degrees! I followed snow school with a few ski runs at Timberline to see the property, and I loved the view of Mt. Hood while riding the lift.

That night we went to bed early so that we could get up and start our summit day by 4 am. We met our guides and started up in the dark, immediately donning crampons in the hard snow. There was a good deal of steep hiking with ski poles, followed by more technical and steeper terrain that involved facing the snow and using the pick of the ice axe. That part was unexpected by me, and truthfully I was quite scared after we passed the hogsback.

Nonetheless, we made it to the summit and enjoyed lunch with a view! We took some pictures and viewed Mt. Rainier and Mt. St. Helen, and then it was time to go. After a few hundred feet of down climbing from the summit, we did some rapeling off of the snow pickets in the steep section that was quite enjoyable. Once we hit the hogsback again, we put the ropes and harnesses away and plunge stepped it to the lodge. As easy as that sentence sounds, that involved hours of snow slogging and we were in a white-out snow storm for the last two hours or so. Easy, this was not!

Here we are with my fave summit view (also, our lunch view.)

Another summit view, toward the other direction.

We enjoyed dinner and local beer at the Ice Axe Grill that evening, and the next morning we headed back to Portland to catch our flights. All in all, what a great trip and an amazing experience to summit a mountain.