Mt. Hood 11,239ft.:  South Climb via Timberline Lodge, summit ski descent via the Coalman Glacier headwall

Date:  July 5th, 2003

Who:  Sam and Lori

Click here for a map of our trip: 

After spending the evening of the 4th with some friends down in Tacoma, we kept heading south to Mt. Hood.  We arrived in the town of Hood River at about 1:30am and found a good place pull off and catch a few hours of sleep in the car...sort of.  In the morning we grabbed a few groceries and continued on to Timberline Lodge.  We found continuous snow to the Palmer Glacier just a few feet from the parking lot!  We were skinning up by about 9:30am, mostly following the Palmer lift.  We decided to put our skis on our packs at the top of the Palmer lift and arrived at crater rock around 1:30pm.  After a long break, we started up the final slope through the "Pearly Gates" and then we were on top.  We had the rare treat of solitude on America's most climbed peak.  In fact, the entire day we only encountered 3 other small groups.  We weren't complaining!  It was time to ski!  The chute through the Pearly Gates was too peppered with rocks to ski, so we found a much cleaner route further west along the summit ridge at the top of the Coalman Glacier headwall (not to be confused with another route of the same name but different spelling on Mt. Baker).  The skiing was soft and smooth on the 40° slope.  I snapped a few shots with the camera and before we knew it, we were skiing freshly groomed slopes all the way to the parking lot!  All in all, a very mellow day.  This was Lori's first time on the summit Hood and it was my third.

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