Climbing Mount Hood in April with Arlene Blum and friends

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Climbing Mount Hood in April with Arlene Blum and friends
"The Space Geometry Climb"

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Space Geometry Climb
Climbing Mt. Hood at the end of April
By Bob McGown

On the spur of the moment, a group of climbers gathered together and ascended Mt. Hood at the end of April in the usual stormy weather. The group consisted of Arlene Blum, Jill Vialet, Santosh Philip, and myself as sherpa/leader. John Clark and Don also accompanied us; photographers from Fortune magazine who packed up a ton of camera gear up the mountain. This adventure was a photo shoot for Arlene’s new book “Breaking Trail: A climbers life” an autobiography on her climbing adventures.

Arlene is a Reed college graduate from my home town, Portland Oregon. Arlene, a Ph.D. in biophysical chemistry, has taught at Stanford, Wellesley, and University of California, Berkley. She frequently reminisces about the all women’s ascent of Annapurna with her friends when expedition climbing was a male dominated arena. She has many tales of 30 successful climbing expeditions as detailed in her new book. As we were front-pointing up the mountain, Arlene reflected upon her ascent of Annapurna and the act of descending the Dutch rib on Annapurna was the hardest physical thing she had ever done.

Our Mt. Hood climb started began at 5 a.m. with mixed rain and snow starting with a snow cat. Despite the weather, we continued persistently to hike up the mountain and finally broke through the clouds at 9,000 feet, near Illumination Rock. The route meandered to avoid the sloughing off of loose snow on unstable slopes. The mountain was encrusted with other-worldly ice formations, rime ice feathers, growing in the direction of the wind and built up larger, cauliflower like-formations about one meter across. At the head of the White River Glacier, there were unusual layered formations looking like primitive stromatolite and sastrugi forms as if from the shore of an ancient frozen ocean.

At the White River Glacier, we had to put on crampons to ascend the steep slope next to Crater Rock with ski poles. This slope avoids the low angle unstable easterly slope of the central Hogs Back, which is an avalanche slope above the Devil’s Kitchen this time of year. The fumaroles were very active, with swirling vortices of mists, steaming their nauseating sulfur gasses.

Hiking through up the chute, through the Pearly Gates, required a lot of step-kicking in the new snow. Jill and Santosh, neophytes in the mountains reflected on their rhythmic breathing at 11,000 feet, step-kicking with American technique. It was three breaths to one step as they ascended the schrund. Santosh thought the experience was like mediation. On the other hand, Jill, who was a tri-athlete, compared it to childbirth! Two points of view for the same experience.

We were thrilled to summit above a sea of clouds with only Mt. Jefferson, Adams, and Rainer rising above the heavy weather below. There was a rapidly moving dark weather front coming in from the west, so we only were able to briefly enjoy the breezy astronaut space walk on the summit.

Mt Hood challenged us with classic spring conditions on the climb with an isolated feeling on the summit. Santosh Phillip, who studied space architecture as his thesis in India, and myself, being a student of astrophysics, called our “off season” ascent of the south side of Mt. Hood the “Space Geometry Climb.” Probably because of the ever-changing ice formations, and our discussions about Arthur C. Clark and Bucky Fuller, we felt like we were on another world as we experienced a random walk in the world of ice and fractal geometry. I imagined the high- flying jet aircraft were low earth orbiting (LEO) satellites against the indigo sky. The Sun played tricks on us with sundogs and glories as we walked on sheets of rime ice across the summit. Although it was a great climb, we don’t want to encourage others to climb Hood in the off-season.

Arlene, the veteran leader of an Annapurna expedition, looked over the north wall (dangerous and not recommended), toward the slope that nearly took her life in her youth. She was saved by an ice tower serac catching her rope and sparing her life on a fall off of the Elliot glacier head wall which she climbed in her youth.

The weather front closed in upon us and there was suddenly a white out. Plunge-stepping down the mountain went quickly along with interspersed glissades. It was my 23rd ascent of the mountain and yet I still felt a deep respect for the dangerous and difficult path to the summit. No matter how often one climbs a mountain, no matter how “easy”, we should remain cautious and take no chances.

We were all exhausted when we got back to the civilization. After a brief visit with my other fellow climbers at Timberline Lodge and a large latte, I drove the team to the airport for the flight back to San Francisco. We reluctantly returned to the world of complexity and thick atmosphere, leaving Mt. Hood in April behind.

Note: My friend and Subscriber Bob McGown, American Alpine Club Pacific North-West Chair, sent me this story. He led this climb the night of his two-day effort constructing a pad for a donated telescope on the top of Pine Mountain. I was tired out from the work, but Bob drove to Mount Hood for this climb with Arlene Blum. Photos of the Pine Mountain construction can be found here. More about Arlene Blum can be found here!
--Webmeister Speik