The Way Is Through
by Andrew Holman
I
t started simple enough. I always wanted to climb the Sandy Glacier Headwall. Not so much because of the character of the route, but more for its rareness. I like the idea of this little slice of the mountain that is relatively untouched by humans. I like that you can see the route looming on a clear day from Portland. Like many climbs on my tick-list, it just never seemed to “go.” I could never seem to hit the right combination of weather/climbing partners/conditions (conditions, conditions, conditions). Early in the week I had been browsing Mt. Hood forecasts (like you do) and saw that, on Saturday night, there would only be 5 mph winds on the summit! Winds looked to be almost non-existent lower on the mountain. Halfway up the mountain the overnight low was even above freezing! To go completely against my thoughts last month in this publication (where I advocated leaving the tent/bivy sack/etc. at home), I wanted to camp on the Sandy Glacier, then do an up-and-over and come down the South Side. Mainly because it was a long climb and
14 —Mazama Bulletin
I wanted to break it up. Actually, that might be a lie; I wanted to get cool photos on a side of the mountain of which I had seen very, very few photos. Specifically, I wanted to do a timelapse sequence at night while we slept. I got to talking with friends, trying to get a hasty Hood team together and, by Friday night, Kai Waldron and I were drinking beers at the Green Dragon talking about how much fun we were going to have over the weekend. Statements such as “I mean, it’ll be great to go up Hood in the warm sun with a good night’s rest. How often do you do that?” were said rather frequently. At 10 a.m. Saturday we were filling our bellies with brunch at Screen Door in Portland, because nothing is worse than being hangry (hungry + angry) on a climb. By noon, we were on our way to Timberline. It was HOT. We stopped and chatted with some BCEP groups to break up the monotony. Just as we were reaching the top of the Palmer, a snowcat topped out a couple minutes ahead of us. There were a few tourists from New York doing the “Wine and Cheese” ride (that’s a thing) to the top of the Palmer. They chatted with us about mountain climbing: “are you going to use that rope?”, “yeah but, how do you attach the rope to the mountain?” “My daughter said Mt. Washington in New Hampshire was taller
than this one. We looked it up, it isn't.” I gave them my ice axe and told them they should pose with it in front the mountain. They felt a little sorry for us and for all the ground we had to cover. They ordered us to gorge on their cheese and fruit; they even insisted that we take the fruit with us (we did both). By about 4:30 p.m. we were at Illumination Saddle staring at the Reid Glacier—finally the stoke was building! What worried us most was finding the mystical spot on Yocum Ridge that made for easy crossing (another reason we schemed to do this part during the day). Some reports said it’s easy to find, some said to not even bother looking, still others doubted its existence. As we looked across the largely-intact Reid Glacier, we could clearly see a snow notch leading up and over in a sea of craggy-choss rock and shark-fin-rime spines. That’s it! It DOES exist! Crossing the Reid was like a walk in the park. Kai had never been on this side of the mountain so I was pointing out all the features like a dorky tour guide. “There’s Leuthold’s!” (quick, precise pointing), “Reid Headwall is somewhere over there” (vague, weatherman gesturing). We started climbing up the side of Yocum Ridge. Snow was solid in the beginning. Eventually we were front pointing on marginal, unprotectable snow, and self-