Mom, Mt. Hood, and My Route to the Mazamas by Peter Boag
A
s I cleared the crater-rim of Oregon’s South Sister at 10 a.m. on July 13, 2018, varied emotions swept over me. First, there was the excitement of being steps away from the summit of a glaciated peak that finally qualified me to join the Mazamas. I had grown up in Oregon, had early fallen in love with the Cascade Mountains, had backpacked and hiked and skied in the region’s outdoors even as a child, and had long been familiar with the Mazamas. Over those years, I often considered doing what I needed to do in order to join. But I had never previously been particularly interested in climbing. My motivations for that had only recently changed. They were connected to the second reason why summitting the South Sister was emotional for me. It was exactly 70-years and two days since my mother, Olga Horand, had successfully ascended Mt. Hood as a fifteen-year-old. That feat had always been one of the major adventure stories in my family. Growing up, we kids would often ask about it. Mother always included in her telling two details apparently most memorable to her. The most vivid concerned being roped up with others during the last steep pitch to the summit. The fellow in line behind her was quite anxious, fearing he would fall and be swept away. Apparently, he let everyone know. Mother always spoke of that with a mixture of comedy and annoyance. I thought about Mom quite a bit during my trek up the South Sister—a climb not nearly so technical as Mt. Hood, but a mountain whose summit reaches toward the heavens to an elevation that approaches the latter’s height. I had lost my mother the previous October; she had suffered Alzheimer’s in her later Above: Olga Horand Mt. Hood, 1948. Photo: unknown
years. I was thankful that even toward the end she still recognized me, though on occasion she did mix me up with my father. He had passed away four years earlier. During my climb, I felt I was finally doing something similar in scale to what she had done—the ascent to higher altitudes was bringing me closer to her. I would like to believe that it was doing so in more than just my thoughts. Both my parents enjoyed the outdoors. Mom was more of a mountain person while my father loved the Coast and salmon fishing. I spent a lot of time as a child in both places, but I took more to Mom’s mountains. Both my parents facilitated my interest in backpacking when I was in grade school in the early 1970s. They enrolled me in a backpacking course through the Portland Public Park system to learn all about it. They both, though my mom more, then accompanied me on varied backpacking trips, including the Timberline Trail around Mt. Hood. My mom’s love of the mountains came by way of downhill skiing, which she began doing as a girl. Her father bought her skis from the army surplus store in Portland just as World War II was concluding. Many a weekend during the ski season, Mom,
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