Most of them would require ideal conditions and solid partners.
Plus, incredible luck from the ever-fickle weather deities.
Of course, those ideas had no bearing on the winter we had.
So I started scanning the weather.
The West Coast was due for a high pressure spell.
If I packed up and headed out, I could give some of the volcanos a go.
Stick around as long as the sun held.
In the light of my failed plans, it seemed the only reasonable thing to do.
Adams was the first place I’d hit.
Ten hours minimum from home.
Rowen was game to come down and meet me from Seattle; we’d link up at the trailhead.
Something worth chasing up the absurd dirt road to the South Climb trailhead on Mt.
Adams in the dark, as I did.
I couldn’t, so I rolled out my sleeping bag with the alarm set for 5am.
If he didn’t show, I’d head out alone.
Many of the Ring of Fire volcanos have giant, easy ramps on their south sides.
Adams is no exception–I made good time to the Lunch Counter.
Ski crampons went on there.
Loose footing and a long potential fall had me switching to real crampons below the false summit.
Turns out, all I had to do was drop in.
His red bibs caught my eye as I skied the not-yet-melted thunder down the upper face.
One rest day in Portland, then up to St. Helens to meet up with Mike.
The other three of us put him in a sleeping bag, and took off to tag the top.
Some weeks later, he was turned around below the top in gnarly winds on Adams.
So going into Helens, I was hoping we’d have an easy climb.
That “easy climb” started with 2500' of hauling skis and boots on our backs.
Pretty dang cool to be able to ski on such an active piece of geologic history.
The descent was super sludge–wet, wild, and fun, when it was steep.
It was four hours south to Bend.
I turned off from Salem thinking I’d hit the next small town.
Maybe the next town?
The gas gauge dipped onto the E by the time I pulled in to Detroit, OR.
Not a pump open.
Car insurance saved me.
After a phone call, USAA dispatched someone with gas.
By 1:30am, I was asleep in the parking lot of a Grocery Store in Sisters, OR.
Brody’s phone call woke me three hours later.
They arrived, we repacked, and headed off for the real Sisters.
With the snow line a ways in, we hoofed it through a recent burn.
Our route lead us off the trail and for the saddle between the Middle and North Sisters.
Washington, Three Fingered Jack, Jefferson, Hood, and Adams barely visible.
To the south, the South Sister, Bachelor, and Broken Top crowded in.
Skiing back to the saddle was treacherous.
We picked our way down, and finally got a little reprieve just above the saddle.
Brody slices the last few good turns.
It seemed pretty straightforward from afar.
Of course, it wasn’t.
It was 7:30pm, having taken nearly three hours to make our traverse.
We wouldn’t be able to make it up there.
At least the view was worthwhile.
Our descent made up for it, though.
We dropped down a steep, icy couloir system on the NE face.
The refrozen, shaded snow surface was plenty edgable.
Slowly, we made our way down.
Here, Brody and Alyssa get ready to exit onto the apron.
The difficult traverse had left me on edge.
The next day, I tried to skin up Bachelor, but was shut down by inbounds uphill rules.
The next morning, I swung over to Rainier.
The mountain was shrouded in fog.
A skin track lead away from Paradise through fresh snow.
Total whiteout skiing followed on the Pan Point apron.
My feet registered that I was skiing pow.
My eyes could make out nothing.
I skied back to the car, and braved traffic into Seattle with all the mad PNW drivers.
Two days of climbing rocks with my sister followed, but you don’t care about that.
Four volcanos seemed like a solid trip.
I was running out of money.
More importantly, I really needed to wash the duffel-full of ski gear festering in my car.
It seemed like a good idea.
Maybe I could even slot Hood into there.
So back to Portland I went, with Hood in the back of my head.
The second day in the Rose City, I woke to realize that it was gorgeous.
This was the weather I needed.
Three hours later, I left Timberline and started skinning up.
I walked past beginning stages of the jump for WCS and K2’s spring training.
There’s something truly bizarre about touring up through a terrain park.
I skirted Palmer, and headed up towards Crater Rock.
For once, there was nobody else around.
Going alone had made my margin for error slimmer.
I’d started late, which made it slimmer still.
This was the consequence.
I put on my skis and retreated.
Here’s the view from above Crater Rock, just before I dropped in.
Driving back to Portland, I was already plotting to come up the next day.
Shawn agreed to hop in for his 13th climb of Hood this year.
We took off from Portland at 4:30am, left T-line at 6:30.
With no ski crampons, he’d be even worse off higher up.
Apologetically, he bailed.
Day two view of the upper mountain.
Many people had seen the weather and made for a climb.
For all the people on the mountain, I stood alone on top.
Wind blows across the barren plateau with its sharp drop offs framed against haze and blue sky.
But of course, the fun part of going places like this is skiing down.
The ridge off Hood’s summit is plenty narrow.
Looking down brings it home: don’t fall.
Tight, icy turns down Old Chute were the order of the day.
There was no telling when we’d hit snow.
Thankfully, the glacier provided us a big boulder to camp under.
It was a fairly scenic spot to tiredly slurp macaroni and cheese.
Because there was no level platform, the tent flapped in the winds all night.
Not exactly a nice thing to contemplate at 1am.
Thankfully, the morning dawned clear and we set out across the glacier for our summit bid.
Rachel really impressed me on this trip.
She hadn’t carried a pack like that in a while.
Yet she forged steadily up the glaciers, keeping her own pace on her end of the rope.
As we moved higher, a lenticular cloud came in and buried the upper mountain.
We’d seen people above us, they’d disappeared, and then came skiing down the glacier.
Since they were going out that day, they had to boogie.
We continued on, hoping that it would clear.
Mountains definitely traffic in irony, because the winds that had flapped our tent all night shifted.
That blew the cloud away, leaving the top shining in the sun.
The upper slopes made for nice ski cramponing, and we topped out at about 2pm.
Four thousand feet of glorious, soft, ripable corn.
Then the traverse back to our boulder, where I rigged up a nap spot in the loft.
That night, we dug the tent in better, and I slept accordingly.
We started the long trip out the next morning.
Then this nice uphill back to the ridgetop:
And the walk back out towards milkshakes.
I took my time coming back from Seattle, driving through the empty fields on US 2.
Flat, tilled earth rolled gently away from the asphalt.
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