Jan 23, 2005, Southside of Hood

I decided to get out again today even though my hypnosis therapy has worn off. In all seriousness, I'm dumbfounded by the amount of snow which has recessed on Mt Hood -- I thought from looking at the webcams and telemetry I had a good understanding of how much had melted but I did not. To keep your skins on the from the lot to the Palmer you need to skin the finger of snow (the one with the hordes of Mazamas on it) next to the Salmon River Canyon, and even then you'll still need to skin over a few "mudflows" (where mud has overran the snow as seen in yesterday's TR). The standard "climber's route" to the Palmer, which I skinned up on November 6th, is devoid of snow.

The weather for the day was pretty good, the sky was overcast with high clouds most of the time but you could still see the summit of Mt Hood almost the entire day. I did two laps from Timberline lodge to the top of Palmer, it was nice to stretch the legs and give my TM11s some exercise; they're fun skis: really short (160cm) and stiff.


Compare this with a photo from the exact same vanatage point taken on November 6th, 2004: photo]
And for more kicks, here's the southside of Hood on September 21st, 2004 (different vantage): photo]

Ski Bowl is also really bad: photo]

Edit to add: Look what you did Skykilo! ;-)