More Mount Hood Pictures

These are low quality and poorly shot from my cellphone, but the mountain was so cool that I still wanted to share.  It was a great ascent up the mountain.  I left my crampons, ice axes, and all my climbing gear in Jersey as I didn't expect to get into any mountains that required that type of gear.  So I couldn't make it all the way to the summit.  After about 2 hours of climbing with my skins on, it got too slippery to be able to make forward progress and attached my snowboard to my pack and started to boot up the mountain. Since it was such a beautiful day there were a bunch of other people climbing up the mountain, some with lots of mountaineering equipment and some with ski's on their packs.  I made it about 3/4's of the way to the summit when it started to get too icy to proceed without crampons.  The surface got too hard to be able to kick steps and the footing was like walking on ice cubes.  It got steep enough that a fall was a definite possibility but would have had some serious consequences.  I found a place where I could stamp out a small platform to be able to sit down and put on my snowboard.  I started the descent and it was so icy going down the first chute that I thought I might be in trouble.  I headed a bit west and the snow got remarkably better.  It went from straight-up frozen ice cubes on a steep slope to great soft powder interspersed with sections of ice cubes.  After a few hours of climbing the descent was very short in time, but long in distance.  Next time I want to go back with the proper gear and go to the top and then head back down on the snowboard. 

Now we are back in Hood River where Misa is getting her yoga fix and we are also escaping a large storm that is hitting the mountain for the next few days.  The forecast is for up to 3 feet of new snow.  This would be great if we had an inside place to stay, but it makes it a bit more difficult to handle when you are dealing with sleeping, eating, and living out of the back of the truck.  It is times like this that we wish we still had the truck camper or a four wheel drive van to come home to each day.  Something where we could cook inside of and stand up inside of.  Oh well, sometimes everything is a compromise. 
We will probably wait out the storm and then head back up the mountain so that Misa can work on mastering her snowboard skills a bit more.