5 minute read
INTO THE WINTER GARDEN
by Ryan Reed
For months the mountain looks sickly, a crumbling pyramid of ochres and grays, dust and debris covering the exhausted remnants of its winter glory. Then September: a dusting of white. October: a thin but lasting layer. Finally, the storms of November: the white blanket reaches down to tree line, the gnarled glaciers smooth out, and secret ice grows in the gullies.
For a certain stripe of climber and backcountry skier, the arrival of snow on Mt. Hood is an annual rebirth after the dead season of summer. The first dusting raises their spirits; an October storm can prompt a furtive glance at the skis; by late November, excited messages start going out: How’s the snow? Any ice yet? Is this or that route in? They begin tracking the forecasts, reading the avalanche reports, and monitoring social media, messaging those who post trip reports for more specifics.
Timberline’s Salmon River lot starts seeing predawn traffic, bringing backcountry skiers and climbers who snub the resort lifts and head straight uphill. Many are there just to ski down the open terrain, paying for a ride with their legs instead of their wallets. But others continue into the wilderness above the Palmer lift, heading for Illumination Saddle, the summit, or maybe a headwall ice route.
Why would anyone climb in winter? Hood offers dangers in every season, but winter brings tenuous weather windows, higher avalanche risk, and longer, colder storms. The danger of rockfall recedes, but tumbling rime takes its place. The snow might be scoured to a hard shine in one spot, then drifted into knee-deep powder the next. Most crevasses are filled, but fumaroles and bergschrunds can lurk unseen below a too-thin layer of snow.
Ah, but the rewards! Cold allows for later starts, and that extra sleep can greatly improve your mood. You ascend through acres of white marked only by your own tracks. If you have skis, you often descend through pristine snows (though at other times, you’ll skid and scrape down icy washboards). Unlike spring weekends, when the mountain teems with climbers of widely varying abilities, in winter you get all the solitude you want—and thankfully, most novices keep their distance.
Of course, the emptiness means fewer parties to follow, or to help. The absence of a boot track can mean post-holing and stomping your way forward, or losing your way altogether. A few Decembers ago a pair of skiers followed my party’s boot prints halfway up a Devil’s Kitchen Headwall ice climb; they had simply followed the only visible tracks, assuming they led up the usual route. They were rescued by a party below them.
The terrain can be otherworldly. After a few high-wind, moisture-laden storms, the mountain becomes a modernist sculpture park. Above the Palmer chairlift, a garden of crystal shrubbery grows on the spine leading up Triangle Moraine. Flatter areas ripple with sapphire bumps, scatted around like beautiful litter. Misshapen icy knobs—chicken heads, or what skiers call death cookies—cover some sections, while drier slopes are shaped into dune-like sastrugi, all whiplash curves and ornamental florets. The occasional warm front brings highelevation rain, which can cover acres of fresh snow with a layer of ice: a breakable crust for one step, a solid sheet the next.
The towers above the Hogsback are the domain of rime ice, a brittle meringue formed when moistureladen, supercooled air hits a surface that can freeze it. Rime grows on outcrops like magical fungus, building on itself, creating fantastic feathered castles. Often in the Pearly Gates, and at the top-out of many couloirs, climbers have to chop their way through barricades of rime, like shattering petals in a thicket of glass flowers.
The ice that forms in the headwall gullies of Devil’s Kitchen and Reid Glacier is fickle. One day, or in one spot, it yields to a swung axe pick like Styrofoam; the next it shatters into dinner plates. You hope for a mix of water ice (refrozen water), and alpine ice (highly compressed snow), but you take what’s there. Some years a route will never come into good condition. The ice routes vary greatly in difficulty: The routes on the east flank, exposed to morning light, demand quick work and mixed rock and ice techniques; the gullies on the Eliot Glacier side require stamina on top of a long approach.
Most winter climbers find ample challenge on the so-called easy routes. The first parties up the Old Chute or Mazama Chute following a storm face the challenge of forging a path through knee- or thigh-deep snow. The Pearly Gates can sport a few spicy ice steps all winter, clogs of rime, and an occasional overhead fin hanging low over the passageway.
When all goes well, most routes are solid, beautiful, and blissfully uncongested. On a quiet winter day, Mt. Hood can seem as welcoming as any day of spring. But the frozen landscape bears the marks of a fierce climate that we, thankfully, never have to experience. We watch the forecasts and pick our spots, and aim for pleasant outings into the winter gardens of our home mountain, our mountain home.
