Mt Hood.

I am clinging on a 60 degree slope with my two feet front pointing and trusting my entire weight on two pieces of one inch steel blades at the front tip of my shoes. I have two ice axes in each of my hands one is already in the ice face and the other i swing with all my force into the ice face ,the ice simply crumbles and falls down. I have 2000 feet yawning below me. I know I cannot make mistakes two other people are tethered to me and I am the last guy in the line. I shout to Phil 'Hey Phil,Its pretty exciting to look down and see how long we may fall if something happens'. Phil shouts 'F*#@ you!' which echoes through the mountain,Chris above phil just laughs. We are working our way up the north face of Mount hood.

The plan to climb mount hood had its genesis at my last climb of Mount Whitney through the mountaineer's route. I met Phillip Hardin then. After our successful summit of Mount Whitney we were sitting around at the local coffee shop in Lone pine for one last celebratory cup of coffee/beer before people went their different ways.The discussion led to what would people climb next?

When everyone looked at me i said 'I plan to climb Rainier this summer',there were a few murmurs of approval,Rick said he had no plans,when it was Phil's turn he said he wanted to do Mount Hood, Rick interjected he would love to do Hood and showed interest in climbing with Phil. I did not know much about Hood then and did not comment anything. But my interest was definitely aroused because this was the second time i had heard that mountain's name in six months,the last time being when me and appu had the same conversation as to what to climb next after our mount sahale climb, Appu had jokingly suggested mount hood mentioning its notorious history and i had dismissed it saying we were not ready for it yet.

We bid our farewells at lone pine and went our separate ways with hood inkling in the back of my mind.

A month later in May I get a mail from Phil asking me whether i would like to join him in the hood climb. I was a bit surprised but i wanted to know more about this climb. After talking with Deb from IMG I had decided to climb the Kautz route on Rainier as that would have been a suitable next step in my climbing curve,i had to have a really juicy carrot dangling in front of me to throw away rainier.

The response i got back from Phil had me really excited,Forget a carrot, I had a juicy apple dangling in front of me enticing me like the apple of eden,the forbidden fruit.For some reason Phil was really impressed with the way I climbed Mount Whitney and felt i was a very strong climber and thought I would be a good partner in this climb.

We were planning to do the north face of Hood. I did not know whether i was really capable of such a leap after whitney but it sounded amazingly exciting to be climbing the north face of Hood.My learning curve would take a huge leap. I considered the route for a week, learning all about it ,then decided to throw down the gauntlet. I had to put aside Rainier for later, I could not let go off this opportunity.Mount hood stands at 11,248 feet with a fatality of 130 people on its slopes. It is the highest mountain in Oregon state.

I was excited ,at the same time very very apprehensive about my capability to do this route, the north face is pretty notorious with very steep ice and snow sections,crevase ridden routes and exposed sections. We had to have a really good guide to take us through. Christopher wright(Chris for short) was our guide,he sent us a mail saying he would be our guide,i pulled up his name on what else?Google. I came to his flickr album( http://www.flickr.com/photos/christopherwright/) and was really impressed with what i saw.I felt assured in the guiding section knowing that i was going to be in capable hands and it did not prove wrong.

I was supposed to fly to portland and meet Phil there,he had taken care of both the car transportation and accommodation. Phil was doing this climb on total sponsorship, i don't know how he managed it,He somehow got people to sponsor his climb,but that was his marketing genius.He was pretty much doing the climb free of cost,everything paid for.

From portland we drove to a place called Hood river where our accommodations were. Oregon is a very beautiful state with lakes,mountains and forests. Funnily the hotel was owned by an indian couple.Phil graciously accommodated a vegan dinner that night at Subway without much ado.

We were supposed to meet Chris at 7 AM at timberline lodges on the south side of mount hood. We lost our way a bit and ended up at timberline lodges at around 7:40 AM. The drive to Mount hood is spectacular,the snow clad mountain stands by itself alone in between green forests and looks so beautiful that it is impossible to take your eyes off it.I think it is one of the most beautiful mountains i have seen,it was indeed a privilege to climb it.

Chris turned out to be a very young guy and a wee bit shorter than i had imagined,not that it mattered,but being humans we are always entitled to our first impressions.wink. After a quick gear check - crampons,ice axes,carabiners,harness,ice screws,pickets,gas,utensils,sleeping bag,mat,tents,clothes,food - my pack weighed around 62-63 pounds.We hauled the packs to Chris car. The plan was to take the car to the north side of Hood,park it there and hike to the base of the mountain for about 3 miles and then climb to 7800 feet and pitch our camps there.As luck would have had it there was a forest fire on the north side and the forest rangers had closed the road way before our destination point.That meant we had an additional 4-5 miles to hike through,not that we were complaining - we just had to carry a 60 pound backpack and climb an additional 1500 feet for 4-5 miles. In chris words 'Come on Gentlemen,Its will build character'. After groaning and literally getting sun cooked in the hot sun we reached the base of the mountain,the funny thing about mount hood is it will receive so much snowfall in winter that all the snow never melts on the mountain and there is suitable amount still left even in peak summer,its a perennial snow clad mountain.

We roped up and made our way through crevasses through slight slopes to reach 7800 feet and set up camp. Chris was very thoughtful in packing vegetarian dinner for me which included some thai veggie noodle soup and buritos with a spicy black bean gravy. Being in the northern hemisphere and being summer the sun sets at around 9:30 PM , from our vantage point we could see Mount Rainier,Mount St helens and Mount jefferson.The sun set was one of the most beautiful ones i had seen in a long time, the three mountains became drenched in red and looked spectacular. Mount Hood itself shone like a mountain of gold in the setting sun. It was just heavenly and i felt so blessed to be witnessing nature in this grand spectacle of hers. Once the sun went the sky was blanketed with millions of stars and you could very clearly see the white foamy path of the milky way, it was spectacular, with no artificial lights to mar the visibility this was simply ..i have no expletives to express my emotions here.Then suddenly i hear this rumbling sound and i see that a whole section of the icefall had collapsed causing an avalanche which runs through the path we had crossed few hours back with huge blocks of ice tumbling down.We are a safe distance away. I am mesmerised,this is the first time i am seeing an avalanche in my life,then i suddenly remember that i have my camera in my hand,but by then it has subsided.

With a blithe heart and mind I went to sleep.

Next day was training day,chris was supposed to train us in steep technical terrain climbing,it involved steep terrain cramponing techniques, anchor placements,different kinds of anchors,belaying techniques, different rope techniques,knots,rappelling,ice axe arrests,etc .. we did all this practical training on a nearby steep slope. Chris turned out to be a very diligent and patient teacher making sure we practice and get everything right.It was a long day and had to get up at 11 PM in the night for our summit bid.We hit the sack around 6 PM that day,being odd times i really did not sleep well but the alarm promptly went off at 11 PM. Grudgingly i woke up,but i knew i had to wake up for i knew how important it was to get an early start. During the nights its easier to travel on ice and snow as it would be firm and makes climbing easier especially on the steep sections, once the sun comes out the snow thaws and softens and we dont get the same grip and tend to slip more.After a quick breakfast and melting some snow and filling in our water bottles we start off at around 1 AM.

It is beautiful,we have a star filled sky,the night air is very still,and the only sounds we hear are our own breathing and the sound of crampons crunching into the snow and ice.We slowly make our way up,chris is leading,phil is in the middle and i am the tail.Its a long steep climb,Chris climbs forward and puts the anchors and i remove them as i climb up, we make our way in pitches through crevasses and steep slopes. At around 5:20 AM hanging onto a slope i see one of the most spectacular sunrises ever. The horizon is a reddish purple circle and all of a sudden the sun pops out,initially purple and then blood red,the whole snow clad mountain turns into a mountain of blood.But the dawn also means that we have to climb faster as the sun's heat will start thawing the snow and chances of accidents will become more. The T-step was causing a pain in the side of the left knee which just aggravated as i climbed higher and higher,beyond a point it became so intense i just gritted my teeth and plunged in each step into the snow and ice. After some really intense climbing we reached the Queen's rest,the steep portion was over.Phil just dropped down dead thanking god. He said 'that was the scariest piece of shit i have ever done in my life'. Chris looked at me - I said 'That was amazing fun',chris said 'So 2 out of 3 people had fun,thats 66 2/3 %,not bad, I am satisfied'.I laughed.

Now I took my camera out and took a few shots, for some reason i was getting a familiar feeling standing on queen's rest,I racked my brain a lot trying to figure why did this place where I was setting my foot for the first time ever seem so familiar.It suddenly stuck me that everest looks the same from the balcony to the summit,i became so excited.This was such an incredible coincidence.This seemed so much like everest except i am at 11,000 feet instead of 28000 feet.

The last section was a ridge about 2 feet wide and 40 feet long with about 3000 foot fall on one side and about a 1000 foot fall on the other.The ridge is an extremely dangerous place to cross during heavy winds as any mistake is definitely fatal. But luckily we did not have much wind and we roped up and started crossing the ridge, Here i made an almost fatal mistake,I got one of my crampons to rub against the pant ,the pant ripped and I tripped and almost fell off,but i luckily had my ice axe in my right hand and was quick enough to dig it deep into snow and stablize myself. I had to apologize to both chris and phil for the stupid mistake. It is a basic fundamental that with crampons you dont walk with your legs close by because the spikes will either catch your clothes or the laces in the other boot and you will trip. That was very very stupid of me to be making that mistake at that point in the climb, it could have proved very disastorous in the wrong weather conditions.


After crossing the ridge it was just a few yards to the summit,funnily all the snow on the summit had melted and it was an earthy summit. We stood for pictures,hugged and patted each other,drank water,got a quick bite and spent around 10 mins at the top and then started the descend through the south side. After climbing the north side the south side was piece of cake to climb down.We pretty much glissaded down the south side.(glissading is you sit on your butt and slide down the snoe like in a slide and you control your slide by using an ice axe, i used my skii poles to control myself),by around 2 PM we were back at the timberline lodges.Cold Coke tasted like nectar after all the effort and walking back in the hot sun. We bid chris farewell and came back to Hood river,we again stayed at the same hotel as before and the next morning i caught a flight to Sanfrancisco,my next mission was half-dome in yosemite,I had a sprained left foot so i was not sure i could climb half dome but the prospect of seeing the much famed Yosemite kept me very excited.

I have not proofread this post as i was too tired by the time i finished it,i will modify a wee bit here and there after proofreading it later. Bear with me till then.