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  Wow...I never thought I would ever climb a mountain. I had always thought it would be a cool thing to do, but never had I thought it would become a reality so soon. Thanks to a co-worker (Frank), he mentioned that he and others were planning on going, so I was like...sure why not. One doesn't get opportunities like this often. Therefore, I started getting back into running and getting in shape to prepare for this climb to the summit of Mt. Hood.
Well, the day finally came. Early Saturday morning, May 12, 2001, at 12AM midnight we waited to catch the sno-cat that would take us to the top of Palmer Lift. Turns out the driver was late and we ended up at the top of Palmer lift around 1:30 AM. The pic here on the left, is us outside of the sno-cat (Frank, Sherry, Me, Dale, and John). 
Anyways, I am so glad that the group decided to take the sno-cat up. I believe if we didn't it would have added a couple of hours to our hike. It was pretty cool passing all the headlamps on the trip up. It's sort of cheating...but oh well, I don't mind. :) Well, as we departed from the sno-cat, we turned on our headlamps and put on our crampons. Dale (our fearless leader, who has been to the summit of Hood more than 15 times) guided us on what we were to do. He gave us a lesson on what we should do if we were to fall, we practiced a procedure called self arrest where we would use our ice axes to save ourselves if we ever fell. 
As we got higher, we passed what was called Devil's Kitchen, where we smelt sulphurous fumes. If you don't know what sulphur smells like, think of rotten eggs, not the best smell. Anyways as we got closer to the Hogsback, Dale decided we should rope up, therefore we got our harnesses on. Here I am on the left, with Dale fixing my harness. The next pic is Dale making sure Sherry's harness is all set and ready to go. This pic here on the right is of me roped up..in the distance you can see what they call the Pearly Gates, the gates to the summit. Before the Pearly gates though, is a crevasse called the Bergshrund. It can be a dangerous part of the climb, yet when we got to it, it was only about a foot wide, so we had no trouble getting across. The Bergshrund gets bigger as the climbing season progresses, so we were lucky to have been able to cross, insteady of going around. Looking down it was another story though. After the Bergshrund, we were pretty much home free. It was a lot steeper the last stretch to the summit, but it was well worth it when we got the top. UNDER CONSTRUCTION!! CLICK HERE forMore Pics |