Fueled by a positive route report and some great pictures on the Internet, I decided to try and brave the early November cold and bag a route that I had wanted to try for many years. I had wanted to try the North Face of Mt Hood since Kent Swanson did it with a partner in the Spring of 1994, however the stars had never been quite aligned right, and I had never yet attempted this climb.
I asked some friends if they would be interested in taking a day off work and getting after it, as I was tired of getting inspired to do something, then waiting for a weekend of good weather. Invariably, this strategy fails on Mt Hood. The weather is so changable, and the North Face in condition for such a short period of the year, that when its in shape you must pretty much drop everything and just go for it. And so Dan and Gene decided to join me on this attempt.
We decided bivying at the parking lot would simply lead to a very cold night and a slow start, and so the plan was to leave Seattle in the late evening, drive down to Mt Hood, and just start climbing. I met Gene and Dan at my house at 9pm, and we executed this plan easily, arriving at Cloud Cap Inn at 3am. After fumbling around in the dark trying to find the right trail (I hadnt been to Cloud Cap since the summer of 1996), we finally headed up the moraine. The temperatures on top of the moraine were agreeable, however it was very cold in the snow-covered boulderfield below the Eliot Glacier, I estimated somewhere around -15 C.
Dan got progressivly colder as we worked out way through the boulders. At one point he started wearing his down belay jacket, and then never took it off and his headlamp dimmed to a dull yellow glow, running out of juice in the cold. Gene and I felt fine in the clothing systems we had chosen though we both agreed it was cold. Both Gene and I have many cold seasons climbing ice in Banff and this was certainly as cold as you would want it to be! In In the end Dan asked to turn around and volunteered to wait at the car. I didnt really want to let Dan sit in the car for 12-14 hours and Gene and I didnt have much of a problem turning around - the energy just wasnt there to think we would have a good climb. So we turned around in the pre-dawn darkness, motored up the side of Cooper Spur, and decended back to the car.