Mount Hood (11,239′) in Oregon is the last glaciated peak that I needed to climb in my State Highpoint quest. Since I had a bit of vacation that I wanted to use this summer, we decided to combine the climb with an Oregon Coast motorcycle tour with friends, Gary and Debbie who came up from Gilroy, CA.

Our original plan was to meet w/Timberline Mountain Guides for a gear check Monday morning and then make a partial climb up to Illumination Rock where we would set up camp. We were then going to make a very early morning summit attempt, return to camp, gather our gear and head down early Tuesday afternoon. The weather looked like it was not going to cooperate and our guide called us Sunday night and informed us that if we were going to make it to the summit, we needed to climb it Monday in one push.

We met at the office early Monday morning, did our gear check and proceeded up the mountain. Once we got to the Illumination Rock/Saddle area, we dumped our overnight gear and continued up. There were few parties on the mountain, which was nice. Mt. Hood is well known for horrible rock and ice fall danger so we were happy that there weren’t too many people ahead of us kicking down rocks. We did notice a dozen or so rocks whizzing down past us but nothing came very close.

Most of the terrain was fairly easy going with 2 pitches that were 50 – 55 degree slopes. It was only a couple hours up and a couple hours down total. The winds picked up while we were on the summit so it was a quick bite of lunch and then we headed down. Going down midday was nothing but mushy snow. We watched the clouds roll in as we stopped at our camp at Illumination Saddle and then the rains came during the night. When we woke up there was basically zero visibility. So, all in all, it was an excellent call by our guide to move the summit climb up.

Heading down was another slow slog as the temperatures had remained mild overnight and we ended up sloshing through soft, wet snow down to the lodge.

This makes State Highpoint #17 and there are only two more of the Western State “Big Boys” left- Gannett (WY) and Granite (MT). We are looking to hit those early fall before the weather turns.