defying the odds

Contributing member, Cliffy V, has been training for Aconcagua. As ducks are flying, I have been climbing (fortunately for Greenie). My latest venture took me to the second most climbed mountain in the world, Mt. Hood. I started off hung over, with my well rested companion named Steve, at Timberline around 10 am heading up to our high camp at 9,200 ft. Cold and cloudy weathertook its toll on us (me), taking 5 hours with a 60 lb. pack in knee deep snow. At close to 4 pm with our tent dug in and snow a meltin', the cloud base finally descended below us and we had clear skies. Sisters and Jefferson were the only thing staring at us as we had the mountain to ourselves. A rare and gloomy feeling. Our plan was to start the rest of the ascent to the summit at 6 am and claim victory at 10 am. Steve started rumbling in the tent around 4:30, and I had to remind him about the 6am start. Thank Heston, he just had to pee and it was so cold we decided to push back our start time to 8 am, a blessing in costume. With temps around 15 degrees, we started our push. Insulated water bottles froze on impact outside our sleeping bags, but we still kept pushing. Nothing but clear skies 'till we hit 10,400 at the Hogsback. Then it came in on us. Temps dropped, wind picked up, and we were in a whiteout. So glad I wasn't on the summit at that point, so glad!!!!!!! With Steve leading the search for our tent, his footprints disappeared three steps ahead. Without a missed ridge, we were at our camp in an hour struggling to pack our packs for the trip down with our gloves on. We would take the gloves off for one minute to put something in, then gloves back on for ten minutes to thaw. This process went on for two hours. Brutal. When we finally got to start the descent, my glasses had frozen over. So every fifteen minutes I had to take the "glove warmer" out of my glove and place it on my eyes because my eyelids were freezing shut. Ya, that cold. Using my GPS, we made it down the Palmer and to the car in another 2 hours. We high fived and cracked a beer, but the beer was frozen. Ya, the beer in the car was frozen. Thank Heston I had whickey leftover in my backpack. Thank Heston! More to follow as I can hunt this weekend!