Mt Hood: Elliot Headwall. Wallace - Olson. 02/13/2022


My friend Oleg and I climbed mt. Hood Elliot Headwall Wallace - Olson route on February 12-13 2022. We did our approach from Tilly - Jane trailhead. Starting hiking at 9am on Saturday, we reached Dome at 2:30pm or so. We spent some time to hack a flat site for our 2 person tent to make us comfortable through the night.

The next morning we started climbing at 6 am. For training purposes we decided to climb with full packs and did not leave anything at our campsite. Crossing some crevasses we came to a small snow bulge from where we started belaying. I almost climbed the 1st snow pitch when Oleg yelled "Party fell into crevasse!" There were 2 climbers descending from Sunshine route and they did not notice the crevasse below them and fell into it. We prepared to turn around and rush to their rescue, but they appeared out of crevasse unscathed. Apparently their crevasse was not too deep. Later we watched them successfully climbed the Ravine route.

After the 1st pitch our route was all ice up to the top. The ice was aeriated and I wish it was more solid for screws placement. The angle of our line was not always too steep. However, climbing low angle was nevertheless tiring for calves and we still need to hack ice with our tools and place screws. This route has an endless number of variations and we choose the line that looked better for us. We took 9 screws with us with some stubbies, anticipating some mixed climbing. From trip reports we knew that people climbed the technical section of this route in 4 pitches. However with 2 screws at the lower anchor, 2 screws in reserve for the upper anchor I had 5 screws left for protection and it was less than I would like to have for the full ice pitch. So we started break pitches. I did not count, how many pitches did we climb maybe 6 or 7. There were several sections of steeper climbing at WI3 grade and in the end of the techical section some curtain probably went at WI4-. We read about 5.7 mixed corner, but found nothing like this. Everything was covered by ice.

I hoped for snow on a final slope, but it was still ice, hard enough to make necessary frontpointing, but too aeriated to put a solid screw protection. We found some rock pro before exiting on a summit ridge. Climbing with packs and breaking pitches slowed us down and it was already afternoon when we reached the summit. The forecast predicted winds up to 70 mph in the evening and it was already very strong wind at the summit. We decided not to take a risk of delay and started descending to the South Side. This carryover actually brought some sense to our climbing with packs.

Oleg called his wife and her sister and asked them to drive from Portland and pick us. As soon as we came to the parking lot, the car arrived. We praised our rescuers and drone to Tilly Jane parking lot to retrieve our cars. That was it, not easy but nevertheless enjoyable and memorable climb for us!

 

Our line

The "Ravine" route

The crux of the climb

The final slope

The storm is coming

 

Approach:

No flotation used.

 

Gear notes: