Snowdome, Mt. Hood, 7/1/07

Double-click the slide show to open it.
The Tour: Snowdome on Mt. Hood. Departure time from the Cloud Cap parking lot -- probably 930 a.m. Return time: about 3:00. Max elevation: 9700 feet (somebody correct me if that's wrong). Skiers: Self and jamie, then camilo, then fritz. Gear: started out in Chacos, then switched to Scarpa T-1s. No skins. Skied the ol' K2 Big Kahunas, of course. Weather: mild.
Sensory Overload
Khao San Road in Bangkok is an orgy of neon lights, thumping music, drunk and drugged tourists, and exhaust-spewing tuktuks. My first two days there left me disoriented and questioning my reasoning for a 4-month tour of Asia. After repeat visits to Khao San Road (between forays to Burma, Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, and various islands), I guess I must've become desensitized to it. One night on my way to grab some Pad Thai, an Indian family passed me. In the father's arms wiggled a fat, doe-eyed baby, maybe 6 months old. His eyes blinked and darted, trying to take in everything that happened around him. Lights flashed (his little feet kicked), a vendor squalked (the baby's head whipped around, bobbing precariously on his straining neck). He blinked and squirmed and jolted every time his eyes or ears beheld a new sensation. On Khao San Road, reacting to every stimulus is an overwhelming ordeal. I'll never forget just watching him shudder and squint, frown, grin, or recoil. In seconds his facial expressions ran the gamut from utter glee to complete terror. I feel a lot like that baby, I'd imagine, right now in my backcountry ski career. Everything, absolutely every little thing, is awe-inspiring.
Yesterday I heard an ice-fall. It almost sounded industrial, like metal crushing metal. Camilo (our adopted tour guide) told me what it was. I'd have thought it was thunder or something.
We saw lenticular clouds spotting the sky, miles and miles out into the horizon. We hiked past ice-crystal things the size of houses, jutting out of the glacier and just sticking out like giant blue shipwrecks. We saw where Elliot Glacier had blown out a perfectly u-shaped valley, just like they told you glaciers do in your geology class. We smelled sulfur. Really. Sulfur? And we saw clouds blow over the ridge, swirling toward us like phantoms, obliterating our view of Hood, then disappear. What a sad day it'll be if those things lose their affect on me. Yup, this is my "Indian Baby on Khao San Road" summer.
"Let's Avoid those big ol' cracks"
Jamie sent me a text message on Saturday. "Let's ski Hood!" The weather took a turn for the better, and quite frankly I'd taken a turn for the worse. If I didn't ski, I'd be one cranky girl. She emailed me some beta on the area she wanted to ski -- Cooper Spur. She thought we should avoid Elliot Glacier because of the cracks forming on it. I entrusted our mission entirely to her hands, since I didn't have the vaguest clue where we were going. Her main concern was "let's avoid those big ol' cracks". I've heard crack kills, and was in agreement with her. 5:00 am Sunday I hit the road for Hood River.
Just your friendly parking-lot stalkers
That's us. We got to the Cloud Cap parking lot, where we packed, repacked, unpacked, and repacked again. Meanwhile, a red car pulled up and a young guy climbed out and started packing his pack. We noted fat skis with tele bindings. Hmmmmmm. He looked like he knew stuff. Plus, he had a giant hole in the crotch of his ski pants. I don't know, there's something quite harmless about a guy in tattered gear, we thought he was probably approachable in a non-ted-bundy way. Jamie asked him a bit about Cooper Spur, and he advised against it noting that conditions on it weren't that great. Still, we weren't too sure about striking out to Snowdome on Elliot Glacier all by ourselves. I can't even pronounce crevasse correctly, certainly I don't belong where there are any.
We got our stuff ready and by the time we were ready to go, Parking Lot Telemarker was also ready to go. I whispered to Jamie, "Let's just follow him, he looks like he knows stuff." She nodded, so we hollered out to him and he graciously accepted our self-invitation.
Lucky, I feel Lucky, so Lucky indeed!
What a great find. Parking Lot Telemarker (Camilo) was a super guy! Quite knowledgeable, really mellow to hike with, and just an all around cool guy. You never know what you'll get when you stalk people in the parking lot. So far, I've been just amazingly fortunate what with the tele-gods, Brian, Ron and the Sourdough Chutes folks. Damn! Camilo led us up to the very base of the glacier where a camp had been set up by some climbers. I felt pretty sure that one of them was a telemark skier that I've been in contact with via various forums, but hadn't met yet. Sure enough, there he was -- Roger! AND, he knew Camilo! So, Roger could vouch for Camilo, and Camilo could vouch for Roger, and Jamie and I knew we were in great hands for the Snowdome. Plus I got to meet Roger and another skier -- Dan. More rabbits for me to follow!
Somewhere along the way we met Fritz. Fritz had his skinny madshus over his back, some leather boots, and he was hauling ass to the top of snowdome. Fritz had a snowdome of his own -- a mop of white hair -- and he had all the signature moves of a cat whose earned his fair share of turns. I want to hike like Fritz when I'm his age. Hell, I'd like to hike like him NOW. His skis, well, his skis were not much wider than my radio antenna on my car. I really figured he'd stop before he got too far up. I mean, clearly the guy knew stuff, but he was skiing those skinny little sticks, with leather boots! FOR THE LOVE OF GOD! Our band of skiers, when we left Roger and Dan's camp, amassed to a whopping 4 people, and we started up toward the Snowdome.
Is this the stairway IN heaven?
Fritz and Camilo kicked steps. Jamie and I walked them. They made it pretty easy for us.
Clouds swirled around the top of Mt. Hood, sometimes threatening to make us turn back due to low visibility. Mostly it stayed clear though, offering views of St. Helens, Rainier, and Adams. We really had a great day of hiking. Only occasionally did the wind blow, once it even knocked me over, but not hard. I didn't even lose my footing. It's so weird that climbing up Snowdome, I was really scared. I thought I'd fall and slide down the snowfield. However, I was planning to slide down the snowfield when I got to the top of it. Explain that, can you ??? Jamie and I decided it must be a control thing.
Anyway, Jamie opted for the "rock pile" rest stop, but Fritz and Camilo continued to the top of the Snowdome. The travelling was easy, but breathing was not. Turns out that if you just look down and plod along, it's not so bad climbing. Seems like a bad idea, like a person could easily hike off a cliff or something. At the top, Camilo post-holed into a baby crevasse. He just stepped into it and fell, about waist-deep. Then he scrambled out and was fine. The crevasse was all covered in snow, so you couldn't really tell that's what it was. He showed me where it was, and I tried to step over it, but I fell too. My built-in crevasse-rescue device (the super-fall-arrest-ghetto-booty) is about where I stopped. It felt a bit creepy, like quicksand, like if i squirmed too much I'd probably get in even further. But, with a bit of wiggling, i managed to get out. And so now i have one for the books, i fell in a crevasse. ;)
The view from up there, my god. We were actually above some clouds! It was like flying but better! I'm adding Alpine Climbing to my list of things I must learn. Nothing yesterday appealed to me more than getting to the top of Snowdome.
Everybody thinks we're nuts
Because you do all that hiking for one run back down. But you do all that hiking for lots of other reasons too. The scenery, the feeling, the sense of accomplishment, the elitest feeling that you're pretty much cooler than anbody on the planet because you're doing something so cool... you know.... It's just a very liberating and empowering thing to do. Me likey.
Jamie is the perfect little ski-fairy. She manages to always look (yeah, I'll say it), cute, like she should have little butterfly wings or something. We joined her at the rocks (she was the lady at the rocks, that day) and we all skied down, taking turns taking pictures of each other. Fun stuff.
And, maybe Fritz IS nuts!
Because the dude ripped all the way down on those little trim-strips called skis, and he just kicked ass. He smiled the whole way down (we all did), just loving the creamed corn snow. Camilo is a rock star AT skier. I'm not sure if he learned his moves from his downhill-racer girlfriend or what, but he looked good and skied great.
We left Fritz at his lunch spot on the glacier (there were a lot of other folks around, and he was quite competent), and we picked our way down to our cars.
My god
What an excellent day. Jamie and I had an absolute blast, got to meet some really cool people, and the snow and scenery was just awesome. I have my turns in for July (but I plan on getting more) and they were amazing.
Thank you to Camilo and Fritz for being great guides and for all the encouragement getting up SnowDome.
Happy Birthday!!
I am thinking that Em and I will do the "Birthday Volcano Extravaganza" up there. Wanna come ski with us? :)