Mt Hood, May 21st 2005

We left Timberline Lodge at precisely 1:00 AM. The cold night air and the eager pace set me on the course for an asthma attack about 15 minutes after leaving the lodge. My chest felt like I had an elephant on it and my heart rate monitor was spiked at 175 even though I was not even moving! Then I had the sinking feeling that I had let my wife borrow my inhaler (she has asthma too) on one of our last trips. My fears were soon realized and I just powered through and tried to adjust my breathing. I am glad I did not turn around because the weather opened up revealing a beautiful star filled night and a nearly full moon to light the way. Except for a brisk wind that always seems to be in the mountains, conditions were perfect! Eventually the combination of slowing my pace and heavy pressure breathing relieved most of my asthma symptoms. At the top of Palmer the time read 4 am. 3 hours to go 3500 feet. Back in my prime I got to the summit in 3 hours so my conditioning is definitely still not up to what I would like. I realized at that point that I was falling way behind the rest of my party because my pack was starting to feel heavy (I was carrying extra clothes for everyone, 1 gallon of water, extra food, a bivy shelter, etc.) and my conditioning was not allowing me to keep up to the pace. I set my pack down and marked it with some wands and then set out with only 1 litter of water, my crampons stuffed in my coat and my ice axe. I quickly gained speed and just below the hogs back I caught up to and passed some members of my party. It was about that time we started getting reports from fellow climbers who were descending that conditions on the upper mountain were “sketchy” Indeed on the slope up to the hogs back the loose snow was suddenly very deep. You could not even probe you ice axe down to the last layer of ice. The angle of this slope was not too steep so we were not concerned about avalanche danger but the upper mountain (Hogsback and Pearly Gates) looked “sketchy” indeed as they were loaded up with tons of snow and their was at least 1 fracture line from a slab avalanche. After watching a brave climbing party get up the bergschund and then turn around we turned around and headed back the the car. As I took the “climbers” path down instead of the ski slopes I it look awhile to get back to the car but I made it back to the car around 9:30 (8.5 hour climb). Overall my thoughts about this climb are that 1, my conditioning is not there yet and 2, I cannot wait until my next climb!