Hood Newton Clark

Took a solo spin up the WyEast route to the summit from the closed Mt Hood Meadows ski area.

Started at 5400' at 237am in trail runners and didn't put ski boots on until 8400'! There was patchy snow down low, but man that was a lot of 'dry' land walking. Skinned for maybe 1000' and then went to boot crampons.

I used two tools for part of the short pitch/traverse on the ridge above the top of the Newton Clark Headwall, which was merited for about 100' vertical. Summited at 8am and skied off the summit retracing the route at 840am. I had to come out of skis and put crampons on for that same 100' section but skied the remaining portion above the cliffs from the summit. The hardest part was transitioning on steep firm snow from skis to crampons- not ideal, but not impossible either, just delicate. On the way up there was a small bench near the top of the most icy bit I though I was going to be able to transiton on but as it turned out I wasn't able to quite make it to it coming down. The upper part of the traverse is 50+ deg, the snow was edgeable and seemed managable with an axe out. The downclimb wasnt any steeper but was all knobby rime ice and not worth trying to mess around on with skis.

Descended the Newton Clark at about 905am and that timing seemed about right with smooth carvable corn. That pitch seemed mostly in the 45-40 deg range. Good skiing.

In an attempt to ski further down than where i walked up, I skied the main Clark valley then  did a righthand traverse back to the ski area at 6400' over the moraine. I was mostly on skis, though I did have to walk over a couple melted out sections on the traverse. It was mostly walking trough the ski area too back to the car. (1000' vertical or so). Was back at the car at 11am or so.

There is good snow on the mountain above about 9k. The summit area has lots of rime ice still and it falling off was my main objective hazard of concern (aside from being late to ski)

In other news the north side of the mountain looks to be in good shape for the time being. Skiing cooper spur looks like a great idea.