Mt. Hood, August 14th & 15th, 2004

We went to Mt. Hood, OR on Saturday the 14th and Sunday the 15th. We had a wedding party to get to in Portland Sunday afternoon at 1pm, so we figured we'd head down early Saturday morning and get some board testing in, then camp overnight somewhere and hit the party on Sunday. I'd built most of the parts of a new board over the previous weekend, so I pulled the rest of it together and laid it up Tuesday night. We left bright and early Saturday morning (5am... yea, I'm crazy.)

We got to Timberline a little after 9am. It was raining. Not a little bit, either... a lot. Dismayed, I decided to sleep for 40 min and see if the rain would stop. When I woke up, it had stopped, and it looked promising, so I went up anyway. Helen took the car and went in search of a camp site, and by the time I'd gotten on the first lift it started raining again. I went for 3 runs anyway, and there were a surprising number of people on the hill given the sloppy conditions.

Coverage at Mt. Hood is average for this time of year, in my experience. You can ride down to about half way between the top of the Magic Mile and the lodge, though I didn't do it. No coverage issues up on the main snowfield, and there were ski racers training and snowboard camps in full swing as usual.

After an hour I packed it in and Helen picked me up. She'd found us a camp site only a mile away at Alpine Campground. Great trees, secluded spot, and it was still dry. We goofed off in Portland for the rest of the day, then slept up on Mt. Hood. Very peaceful.

The next morning was perfect. Warm and clear. We went up on the hill and I rode for about an hour and a half before we had to leave. We had to get to the party in Portland, after all. I managed to get off the hill before the snowboard camps got started, too, so it wasn't too crowded until the last run.

(All of these pictures were taken by Helen Todd, a most excellent photographer, cyclist, and snowboarding babe. Check out her stuff at www.artgeekstudios.com.)

Our camp site at Alpine Campground. I highly recommend this place if you want to hit Mt. Hood early in the morning. Nice soft ground, big site, and very private. (Were were in site #7.) And you can't beat a 2 min drive to the parking lot.

Nice shot of Mt. Hood.

Close-up of Crater Rock. You can see the bergschrund in the upper right.

The lower run back to the base of the Palmer Express.

Base of the Palmer Express.

Man, that was a nice day...

Mt. Jefferson is in the background.

Two women racers were practicing carving on one ski. (Look closely. You'll also note their coach in the upper right holding one of each of their skis.) These girls were flying, and carving beautiful arcs in some pretty crappy snow... all on one ski. Fantastic.

Here are a few shots of me testing out a freshly built board. It rode quite nicely, if I do say so myself...