Mt. Hood. I've been there a dozen times now. It's an iconic mountain rising 9000 ft. from base to an 11,239' summit, snow capped all year and clearly visible from 100 miles away when weather permits. Weather changes fast in the northwest, so close to the Pacific. It can change from clear blue sky to a vertigo inducing white out in 15 minutes. I have had that experience alone at the 10,000 ft. level and luckily found my own ski tracks in the snow from the previous day and followed them down to safety. Snow rarely falls in any direction but sideways on Hood. Last year we had 100 mph wind on our scheduled summit day, always the first Monday in May. This year I did not bother to bring ice axe, crampons, or climbing harness because the avalanche report looked positively frightening. 3 feet of snow in the preceding 5 days and several weak layers deeper in the snowpack. The report advised against any climbing on the summit cone. We stay in the Silcox Hut at the 7000 ft. level and normally get a snowcat ride to the top of the highest lift at 8500 ft, which rarely runs this early in the season. In fact, even the Magic Mile lift from 6000 - 7000 ft. had not run all season.

Our first ski day was Sun. 5/1. The good news was that the Magic Mile and Palmer chairs were both running. The bad news is that the surfaces were rock hard with ice balls on the groomed part and frozen sastrugi on the ungroomed. However the latter softened up and provided a couple hours of challenging but very nice skiing. We caught our snowcat ride up to the hut in late afternoon. Some chose to skin up while their baggage and alcohol rode, but I've gotten lazy. All decided not to climb on Mon. so the usual 2 hrs. of assigning rope teams and practicing self arrest with an ice axe and cramponing technique was canceled.

Mon. dawned at 20 deg. with clouds moving in fast. More rock hard snow and after mid morning new snow coming in sideways and not sticking. We skied tree lined runs between 5000 - 6000 ft. The Magic Mile lift was shut down due to wind at 2 so we had to take a snowcat ride back up to our lodging. The snow turned to graupel and began to pile up.

It snowed continuously on Mon. and in squalls on Tues, but totalled only a few inches. Nevertheless there were beautiful dense pillows in the sastrugi fields above tree line. It was kind of like tree skiing. Instead of aiming for the spaces, one aimed for the pillows and turned there. Lower down there was a thin dense carpet of powder on the tree sheltered runs. All the attendees except my son and I were from Seattle and did not lift ski, instead starting their drive home. We had the mountain to ourselves. We skied one run on the far skier's left all day and had fresh tracks all day. The half life for filling them with fresh wind sifted snow was about 2 hrs. These runs were as nice, in their own way, as any that I have skied anywhere in an 80 day season.

Sastrugi; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zastruga

Graupel; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graupel