Night Hike Training May 15th, 2010

This was another one of our big training events that we looked forward to. It was not so much about training for fitness but more about getting used to doing things in the dark under our headlamps such as doing gear checks, putting on/off the crampons, adjusting the boots, etc., since we will be summitting under similar conditions on our actual climbs. Tonight, we would start our "simulated" climb from the Timberline Lodge and go up about 1,500' to a mountaineering hut called Silcox Hut where we would turn around and come back down.

Some of us had decided to go up to the Timberline Lodge early to get few hours of naps in before the hike. By the time I finished work and managed to get on the road, it was already past 4pm and the traffic on the freeway had already come to an agonizingly slow crawl. It took me over two hours to get to the lodge where an hour would usually be enough. Though the plan was to join everybody at 6pm to have a dinner with them before the nap, this obviously was not going to happen at this point. So I decided that I would stop at Ice Axe, a beer and burger joint in the area, where I had a $12 Philly sandwich, fries and a glass of ice tea to wash them down.

When I got up to the Timberline Lodge's parking lot, the one end of its overnight parking section was lined with cars with climbers in them getting some Zs already. I was somewhat surprised by the number of cars but I probably shouldn't have considering Mt. Hood was the second most climbed mountain in the world (the first was Mt. Fuji in Japan.) I backed my car into an open parking space, made sure it was in gear so that it wouldn't start rolling by accident while I'm sleeping in it, and hopped out of it to go use the facility in the lodge.

As I was walking up the inclined parking lot, I saw Marty and Kristen coming down from the lodge to their car. The weather was crystal clear that night and the visibility was unlimited in all directions. I saw Mt. Jefferson to the south and Mt. Hood looked a lot bigger than usual.

Now the challenge was to create a little nook in my car where I would be able to unroll my sleeping bag and pad, not to mention myself. If you've ridden in a Jeep Liberty before, you probably can see how awkward this arrangement would be. The fact that I had so much junk in my car didn't help either. I folded down one of the rear seats' seat backs so that it would make a small area that somewhat resembled a reclining hospital bed, except that it was only about 5' long. However, once I got settled into my sleeping bag, it really wasn't as bad as I thought it would be. In fact it was surprisingly comfortable even though I was having to curl up in a fetus position in order to fit in the space I just created. Geoff, a friend I met through Reach The Summit program, was also pulling up next to my car as I was fussing with my napping space.

"Quack, quack quack! Quack, quack, quack! Quack, quack, quack! ..." My alarm clock was already... well... quacking. It didn't feel like I fell asleep at all but I must have - two hours went by as if it was merely 15 minutes. In an hour or so, we were to meet up with the rest of the climbers in the climber registration area and start our climb around midnight. Where's the nearest bathroom anyway??

After nursing a hot cup of strong Earl Grey, I was all decked out in mountaineering gear and ready to start the hike. We split into three different groups as usual but, this time, there was no particular category, such as a fast group, an intermediate group or an "endurance group" since it was going to be fairly a short hike. Once we completed this process, we headed out to the Timberline Trail that stretched pretty much straight up from there to Silcox Hut. In 10 minutes or so, we stopped to check our gear and to strap on our crampons. The temperature outside was a bit high at around 50 degrees and the snow felt heavy and mushy under our feet.

Then the usual and familiar slog started. Step by step we started our way up the foothill of Mt. Hood. There were lots of other groups on the trail as well. All probably aiming to summit. At one of our breaks, we turned off our torches to look up and admired the dizzying display of stars in the new moon. I wish I could have taken pictures of them but they wouldn't even resemble any sort of justice anyway.

The major difference between the training hikes we had been doing and this hike was that the snow was so soft and mushy that it was sort of like walking on the beach. The fact that the snowcats had been chewing up the trail earlier didn't exactly help either. We also stopped as often as necessary to practice making adjustments to our plastic mountaineering boots. I think almost all of us hated the plastic boots because it felt much like walking around in ski boots. Not that we had much other choices.

By the time we reached the level slightly above the Silcox Hut, we were roughly around 7,000 in elevation where we turned around and started going down. The gradient of the slope seemed to significantly increase from that point on and many of the groups continuing higher were putting their harnesses on to be ready for their eventual roped traveling.

Going down was much rougher than climbing up. The snow was completely chewed up by then by both the foot traffic and the snowcats making it difficult to make any step even close to decent. Mercifully, it took only about an hour or so to make our way down to the Timberline Lodge. By then, I was ready to head home and to squeeze in few hours of Zs before I had to head back out for the volunteer activities I promised to attend that day. What a hike!!

As if this was not enough this weekend, our next hike is scheduled tomorrow, a day after this night hike, at Nesmith Point in the Columbia River Gorge. This will be our longest and toughest hike yet with the vertical elevation gain of 3,800 over a distance of 10 miles round trip. Stay tuned!!