May 9, 2026

Portland departure time – 12am. I hadn’t started a hike this early since Mt. Kilimanjaro in 2018. With “Hoody season” warming up, it was important to be off the summit within 1-2 hours of the sun melting the snow. Excited, nervous, and sleep-deprived, I thought of what I could be missing as we did one final gear check – ice picks, crampons, headlamps, rain jackets, puffy jackets, gloves, sunscreen…ah yes, trekking poles. “You’re gonna need those,” Skyler said, lending me his own. Skyler was a friend I’d met through running, who’d summited Hood 3 times before. His friend, Kyle, also joined us. Kyle and I had never summited, so we relied on Skyler to show us the ropes (ironically, Skyler advised staying away from all ropes on the mountain due to their risk).

At 1:30am, the three of us departed the Timberline Lodge parking lot. A line of lights glimmered up the mountain – it was going to be a crowded day. “The most dangerous thing about this mountain is the people,” Skyler warned. While the bright trail of lights illuminated a pathway, the mountain itself was swallowed in darkness.

The great thing about Hood is there’s a series of checkpoints you can break it into. The first was Silcox Hut, about a mile up the mountain. It was the halfway point of the ski lift, and the farthest I’d ever hiked up before. I was anxious to see all the points people referenced for Hood, like the infamous “Devil’s Kitchen” and “Illumination Rock.” After Silcox Hut (7,016’ elevation), the next objective was Palmer House, the highest point of the ski lift (8,540′ elevation). From there, we passed Illumination Rock and reached Crater Rock (10,524′ elevation), where the true challenge began.

It was sunrise now and everything got a little more real. This was as far as you should go if you were not prepared for a climb. People were putting their crampons and helmets on, preparing for the last 600 feet of elevation up the ice wall that led to the summit. I was feeling very confident up to this point and felt good about making the climb. Looking up at it, it didn’t even look that steep.

About five minutes in, I found myself on all fours, looking directly at the slope, inches from my face. “Ice!” someone yelled from above, followed by large softball-sized chunks of ice falling down the mountain. Head down, my helmet absorbed a big smack as several ice shards flew by. The heavy traffic of mountaineers meant higher risk of displaced ice raining down. I positioned myself diagonally from Skyler, who was ahead of me – he would check in on me every now and then, making sure I was hanging in there. While the slow bear crawl of the climb felt doable at first, I felt drained after 20 minutes. The hardest part for me was the inability to rest; at most, I could bend my knees slightly until they touched the slope to relieve tension in my legs, but then had to hold on tighter with my arms. I stuck to the 3-limb rule (keeping 3 limbs grounded at all times), and while I’m sure there was a more efficient way to move, I wasn’t about to test anything out.

After one hour of slow, calculated movement, we finally made it to the summit around 7am, with no less than 40 people at the top. It was a beautiful clear day, with views from Mt. Rainier to South Sister. I took a swig of Skyler’s Modelo (by far the best tasting Modelo I’ve ever had) and felt accomplished making it to the summit.

Now resting, I felt the adrenaline wearing off. My legs were wobbling and my toes were absolutely cooked (forcefully kicking ice two weeks after a marathon made for some very unhappy feet). While I was enjoying the victory of the summit, I was dreading going back down…there was no shortcut or easy way back; it was simply climbing in reverse all the way down. We made our way back to the Old Chute, where a line of people waited to start the descent.

About a quarter of the way down, I felt my crampon loosen on my right foot. To my horror, I looked down and saw the spikes were completely dislodged from my boot, now dangling from it. I panicked – there was just no way I could position myself to put it back on, and every second I spent thinking about it was more time expending energy. I hadn’t tied it as tightly as I should have at the summit, a grave mistake I learned the hard way. Distressed, I gave a quick messy prayer, suddenly remembering a C.S. Lewis quote about how God has all of eternity to listen to a split-second prayer from a pilot in a falling plane. It was during this moment an older man noticed my situation and inched his way over to help. Digging both ice axes in the mountain, he found a stable position to somehow clamp and tie my crampon back on. “I owe you a lifetime of beers,” I told him, not knowing what else to say. “We’ve all been helped before – just paying it forward” he replied. There were no words to express my gratitude in that moment.

The next hour of reverse climbing felt like an eternity. Skyler and Kyle waited for me at Crater Rock, as they’d finished their descent well before me. Relieved to finally be off the slope, I stowed my ice axes and crampons and glissaded a good portion of the way down.