What are you willing to lose a night’s sleep over? When Pen, Marshall, and I were trying to figure out how best to climb Mt. Hood AND not miss much time away from our families, we decided the best idea was to simply forget about the whole sleeping thing. So we met up around 9pm on Sunday, arrived at Mt. Hood at around 1:30AM and were on the trail by 2AM. After consuming quite a number of energy drinks, candy bars, and caffeinated beverages on the drive south, we must have been pretty amped up because we covered the first 3,000ft. of elevation gain in only 2 hours. We kept up the speedy pace until we reached the Hogsback a ridge formation 500ft shy of the summit. After a small break, we donned the helmets, ditched our trekking poles, and began to use our ice axes as we ascended about 500ft. of icy 45-50 degree slope. Once we reached the summit, we still needed to remove the crampons and scramble up the knife edge summit to the true summit where we enjoyed a bit of hackey-sack, took some pictures, and were amazed at how much smoke was in the air from all of the forrest fires we have been having. Five hours of climbing was certainly worth hanging out on the summit for about 45 minutes. We put all our gear back on and headed down the mountain to return to the car by 10:45. Five hours up, three hours down, and 9 hours total in the car. All in all it was great company, a fun climb, and believe it or not, Marshall was the only one to fall asleep on the way home.

-Chris