Lunch at Devil's Kitchen
Over the last few years I’ve done a fair amount of hiking and exploring up on Mt. Hood. I’ve hiked up to the glaciers, explored some of the vanishing ice caves and snowshoed well above the treeline. I’ve even spent the night part-way up the mountain in Silcox Hut. Despite all that, I’ve never really thought about trying to summit. Lately I’ve been thinking about how I would like to explore Mt. Hood ‘s higher elevations. Since it’s still a little too cold to go canyoneering at the moment, I decided it was time to see what this mountaineering thing is all about.
On a tropical February morning, a few of us decided to head to Mt. Hood and see how high we could get for lunch. Since our goal wasn’t to summit we started at the civilized hour of about 8:00. If you want to summit it typically means alpine start, which is o’dark thirty. We just made it up to Timberline lodge before the the skiers and snowshoers started flooding in. The parking lot went from empty to full in what felt like a matter of minutes.
After a quick check in at the lodge, we started up the mountain. It was a bluebird day and was already fairly warm. Someone missed the memo about winter weather and that was fine with me. The start of the hike is up the snowcat track. We were in luck that the snow was firm enough that we didn’t need snowshoes. We were just in our boots. After a few minutes we realized that the layers needed to come off and we were all down to basically just a shirt or a light jacket. Oh, and lots of sunscreen.
Since we got a late start there was a conga line of skiers heading up to the top of Palmer Glacier, which meant there were plenty of people to chat with. The problem with walking up a mountain is that you can see where you are going from the start. It wasn’t too long until we were at Silcox Hut. From there it was up to Palmer Glacier, where most of the skiers stopped climbing and started their runs down the mountain.
The snow started changing to ice so we put on our crampons and pulled out the ice axes. Not only did the snow start turning to ice, but the steepness increased quickly. With every step the world below started to fall away and we quickly gained elevation. “Quickly” is a relative term since I was starting to feel the elevation. Keeping a moderate pace kept me from having to stop too often to catch my breath.
The ice was fascinating with so many different shapes. With names like chicken heads, death cookies and sun cups (Google them if you’re interested) you can only imagine what it looked like. I even found a formation that resembled a wave. The color of the ice became more and more blue as we climbed.
After what felt like hours of slogging up the mountain the top started to come into view. I could see the classic technical climbing routes and the earlybird climbers that were already on their way down. The looming headwall and ice-covered rocks were just amazing.
Since we weren’t planning to summit Devil’s Kitchen was our destination for lunch. Devil’s Kitchen is a large bowl with a fumarole in the middle of it. A fumarole is basically a vent for the volcano that typically spews steam and other gasses such as sulfur. Due to the heat and gas snow can’t build up here making an interesting formation. Above Devil’s Kitchen is Hogsback, which is a narrow spine running above the fumarole leading to the technical ascent to the peak.
Devil’s Kitchen fumarole
After having lunch with a fantastic view of the Southern Cascades it was time to head down the mountain. Going down was definitely faster than heading up but it still took a long time to get off the mountain. This is one of those times where I wished I could ski. I was jealous watching people fly down on skis turning my hour plus hike into a 10 to 15 minute adrenaline rush.
I never really wanted to summit Mt. Hood but after being so close to the top I just might have to reconsider.