I was as clutching precariously to the side of a 40 percent slope of ice on the upper flanks of Mt Hood as rocks and ice tumbled past me. Moments before, I had peered warily up the icy chute from behind the protection of a rocky outcrop. Seeing nothing immediately coming down the slope, I had scampered with crampons and ice axe halfway up to the next point of safety when my two-way radio crackled. “Heads up! There’s some stuff coming down toward you!” I froze, uncomfortably aware of how vulnerable I was clinging to the ice on an exposed slope. There was no time to move…the sickening sound of falling debris jerked my attention upward. A cascade of rocks and ice ricocheted around the corner and tracked in on my position. I could do little but press myself tightly to the ice and dig in… my whole body sought the protection of my helmet. I braced for the inevitable as small rocks and chunks of ice careened past my head, whispering like bullets. A baseball sized rock struck my helmet with a resounding “Crack”. The rocks passed and in the ensuing silence, I cautiously peeked from behind my helmet as a turtle might emerge from its shell after enduring the abuse of a curious child. Seeing a temporary reprieve from the crumbling mountain, I scurried up behind a protective rock to decompress and catch my breath. I was experiencing the raw personality of Mt. Hood.

From my bedroom in Portland, I can look east and see an unobstructed view of Mt Hood rising prominently on the horizon. Her mood is always changing…some mornings she will be draped loosely in clouds which seem to softly caress her slopes. On occasion I will awake to my entire room glowing in a brilliant orange and I’ll look out the window to see Mt Hood silhouetted boldly against a spectacular sunrise. From a distance, she appears as a serene and peaceful backdrop to the city of Portland, untrammeled by man. I find her to be very alluring and I look to her nearly every morning when I awake. She seems to serve as a constant reminder of awaiting adventures. Which may be why, on any given day of the year, close inspection would unveil thousands of little black dots navigating the slopes….skiers, snowboarders, climbers, and hikers...all drawn by her sometimes fatal attraction. Mt. Hood is the second most climbed mountain in the world next to Mt. Fuji in Japan, yet this statistic does not reflect the danger inherent in climbing this 11, 284 foot peak. Weather, rockfall, elevation, icy conditions, and a gaping crevasse called The Bergshrund all conspire against the intrepid mountaineer. I had climbed Mt. Hood nearly three years ago upon my arrival in the Portland area, treading awkwardly to the summit in my first real mountaineering experience. I wrote the following entry in my journal about the climb…

We arrived at Timberline Lodge at 11:00 PM to behold an awesome spectacle...the mountain literally glowing from the snowfields and glaciers reflecting the light of the full moon. Even though we had headlamps, they were rendered unnecessary by the cool blue light. The objective in climbing Hood is to start around midnight, reach the summit by 5:00 or 6:00 AM to catch the sunrise, and then head back down the mountain before throngs of climbers and the early morning rays of sun combine to create a slick and dangerous traffic jam on a nearly 50 degree slope. If everything goes according to plan...you should find yourself in the parking lot of Timberline Lodge drinking a beer by 9:00 in the morning. So as the pumpkin hour approached, we geared up and began our assault on the mountain. After several hours of hiking it became apparent that the "gentle" slope up the south side that we had observed from the lodge was actually a lung-wrenching, quad-burning 45 degree slope. And with each step forward we would ascend into thinner air than the step before and our hearts would beat just a little bit faster. By 3:00 AM we had reached the top of the Palmer Ski Lift, which takes skiers to 8500 feet and landmarks the halfway point of the climb. Up ahead we could see the dark clusters of groups which had paid $90 to have a snowcat take them to this point and negated an official "summit" in the opinion of all those who had hiked from the lodge. At 5:00 AM we struggled to a narrow ridge leading to the last, and most treacherous, 1000 feet of the mountain...there we found ourselves perched precariously with at least three other groups all roping up for the final push to the summit. The route followed the ridge to a 50-degree ice slope, around a gaping crevasse, and through a narrow chute in the rock cliffs to the top...it looked sketchy at best. It was that time where you reflect upon the journey that has taken you to this point, assess the next step, and ask your heart whether it is really worth it to continue on...two in our group decided to turn around...the remaining three of us opted to push forward. We roped up and joined the slow progression of climbers as the eastern horizon exploded in color and the mountain cast a perfect triangular shadow over what seemed to be all of Oregon. Half way up, the group ahead of us froze...conditions were unfavorable for them and they lost the edge...one man in their party slipped but was held by the rope...they turned around and like a car headed the wrong way on a one way street, they backed down the mountain. We kept going. Being the least experienced in our group, it was a mental struggle to block out the fact that I was clawing my way up a solid ice slope above a deep crack in the ice...my legs burning...and my heart pounding in the thin 11,000 foot air. It was one of the toughest challenges I have brought upon myself in quite some time. But as we crested the summit the sense of accomplishment, relief, and stunning view made it all worthwhile. It felt so good to just sit and gaze in every direction, soaking in the landscape...that is, until we had to think about climbing back down... We would descend the same route as we came up, but this time there would be more climbers to contend with and I find myself more apprehensive going down than coming up. Step by tenuous step, we inched back down the mountain. Half way down, a woman coming up had her crampon slip off her boot, and for a moment, she struggled to keep the edge... I did my best to reaffix her crampon and cinched the straps as tight as possible but it still was loose on her boot...she continued on. I wonder how it went for her... Back on the narrow ridge, after coming down the mountain face, what had before seemed precarious, now felt like standing in the middle of a K-Mart parking lot. The sun was now fully up and I didn't envy those poised to make the final assault in any fashion...the ice was getting soft...perfect conditions for slippage...and perfect conditions for sliding down the mountain to which we took great delight. The solid bumpy ice rendered our butts frozen and bruised but hey...at least we weren't walking! And we reached the bottom of Hood in half the time it took for us to get to the top. As I sat in the parking lot of Timberline Lodge, mentally and physically exhausted after 10 hours of hiking, climbing, and glissading, I looked upon Mt Hood and recognized a whole new appreciation for a mountain I had previously taken for granted. It had been an epic night.

The memories of my climb up Mt. Hood had begun to fade after several years in Portland and a return climb inched it’s way toward the top of my “To do” list. I gathered a close and capable group of friends to join me. We would climb Friday, June 1. On Wednesday evening, I had been doing some research on the internet about the latest climbing conditions, and checking updated weather and avalanche reports. The weather was going to provide a perfect window of clear skies and high pressure. But I was concerned by a statement in the climbing report that described The Bergschrund, which is a large crevasse along the route, as beginning its annual summertime yawn. Climbers were reported as still traversing across a snow bridge over the top of the crevasse. That seemed incredibly sketchy to me and I expressed to Dave Hicks, one of my housemates, that we would climb around the Bergschrund and avoid the gaping chasm.

Thursday, as I was walking home from school in the early afternoon, my mind toiling with the logistics of our climb and what gear we needed to bring, my cell phone rang. It was my friend Aaron. “Dude! Have you heard what’s going on!?” I hadn’t. “A whole bunch of climbers have fallen into the crevasse on Mt Hood…some of them are dead! But that’s not the worst of it…a rescue helicopter airlifting out some of the injured crashed up on the mountain and it happened on live TV! Say, weren’t you planning on climbing Mt Hood tomorrow…?” I felt a shiver run the length of my spine.

Shit had hit the fan on Mt. Hood. Within the next thirty minutes, my phone exploded with calls from concerned friends and family. Portland was on standby as seemingly everyone stopped what they were doing to watch the dramatic TV footage and listen as events on the upper mountain unfolded. I couldn’t believe it. As I looked from my apartment window out across at Mt Hood, the images seemed surreal to me, especially considering that just hours after the incident, I would have been digging my crampons into that very ice and sucking in the exhilarating air of 10,000 feet. Our trip was of course postponed and I spent the summer eying Mt. Hood from afar with a renewed respect.

The inspiration to climb Hood again arose unexpectedly. A friend of mine, Kurt Hicks, had scampered to the summit solo in late November and described the climb as somewhat sketchy, but reasonable. It was on. Within a matter of days, my friends Bryce, Chris, Justin, and Chris’s friend AJ agreed to climb Hood before Christmas at the next available window of opportunity. Remarkably, the weather forecast for the weekend of December 7 predicted clear skies and balmy temperatures. A rare cold air inversion in Eastern Oregon would produce summer-like conditions on the mountain, bad news for skiers anxiously waiting for some solid winter snowfall, but good news for us as we shouldered our backpacks and headed into the starlit alpine night at 2:00 AM.

By 6:00 AM we were resting on the lip of the Bergshrund, eyeing the final treacherous push up through the Pearly Gates to the summit. As the eastern horizon illuminated the mountain in a soft blue light, I considered the fate of the three climbers that had died in this very spot early in the summer. A tangled and flailing blur of climbers had careened down the icy slope above and plunged into the yawning chasm. Above me I imagined a helicopter hovering, washing the ridge with powerful winds, and then veering, left, down and into the mountain, as en explosion of rotor shrapnel launched into the air and the helicopter tumbled, rolling down toward Crater Rock. Shouts and screams would have reverberated across the snow. Such a different scenario from the quiet and peaceful solitude of the mountain that morning.

Bryce and Chris, eager to reach the summit and fueled by oxygen rich distance running blood boiling in their veins, pushed ahead. My hand-held two-way radio sprung to life as I chatted with Justin and AJ below, and Bryce and Chris nearing the summit above. They reported tough going. The route narrowed through a deep chute encased with ice. Justin, AJ, and myself cinched up our gear, triple checked our crampons, and headed up. It was at this point that I found myself pressed in intimate embrace with the icy slope as rocks and chunks of ice breezed over me. What the hell was I doing? The photographs in National Geographic Adventure about the Mt. Hood incident were becoming all too real. I felt like I was testing my luck, and I wondered if it was worth it.

Justin and AJ scrambled up behind me and we all peered around the corner. The most treacherous section lay ahead. I was loosing my confidence. Chris jumped on the radio and asked if we would like them to toss down the 160 meter rope we had hauled up with us. I answered with an emphatic “Yes!” In a last minute decision, we had agreed to pack with us the section of rope, some carabineers, and a harness. It would prove to be our lifeline to the summit, and back down the mountain. The coil of rope unfurled down the narrow chute and one by one, we hauled ourselves up toward the top. Chris shouted encouragements as Bryce captured the moment on a video recorder he had packed along. My heart pounded. Without incident, the five of us pulled ourselves to the summit and exalted at our success. The view was absolutely unreal.

That was over a week ago that I stood on the summit of Oregon’s highest point with several of my best friends. It was good to bond with the mountain again and I am especially appreciative of her hospitality. A lot of things could have gone wrong up there, yet all five of us returned to Timberline Lodge unscathed. I did realize with a sinking feeling that somewhere between the summit and the parking lot, a distance of over three miles and 5000 feet of vertical elevation, I had lost my wallet. While glissading down the snowy slopes, a zipper on my backpack had become unfixed, and the wallet fell out. Mt. Hood now completely owned me. Two days later, I graciously picked up my wallet from a gentleman here in Portland who had found it laying in the snow a thousand feet above the Palmer Ski Lift. He checked the climbing register, found my phone number, and called me up. I couldn’t believe my good fortune. Not only had Mt. Hood let me live, but she had returned me my identity. Today Mt. Hood is hidden somewhere in a grey canvas shroud…I expect upon unveiling that she will have been coated with a thick layer of white snow. She’ll call to me again I think and I’ll try to catch her in a good mood.


Uncage the Soul
JQ

for contact with/comments and questions to the author: jq_waller@mac.com