Ben McKinley understands the importance of timing when it comes to skiing Mount Hood in late May. That’s why he woke up at 3:20 am on a Saturday, to get started early and make it up to Wy’East Face for some perfect spring snow.
McKinley is the 38-year-old founder and CEO of Cascade Web Development and a long-time racer, coach and backcountry explorer. He coached high school racing at Jesuit and Tigard for 11 years and has coached adults through the Multnomah Athletic Club for the past eight years. He had skied Wy’East Face before, and his goal on this day was to make it to the top of the face at 10,700 feet and rip it all the way down to the Mt. Hood Meadows parking lot for 5,400 feet of vertical in one run.
McKinley and his friend Scott Rice started skinning up at 5:30 and worked their way steadily up to Vista Ridge as the day broke clear and calm. The snow was slick but softening as they climbed up above Mt. Hood Express and the Cascade Chair. Visibility was excellent.
On that same morning the south side of Mount Hood was frantic with activity, as rescue climbers managed to find and save 59-year-old Michael Adams of Tualatin after he slipped on the ice and fell several hundred feet down into a crevasse. But the Southeast side of the mountain was pretty much deserted, with just one other climber around, waiting for the ice to soften to climb up higher.
Here’s a shot of Scott Rice climbing up through some dirty snow on the ridge to get to the good stuff:
High up on the mountain, the ice was glistening, as you can see from this photo:
They put their crampons on at about 8500 feet. Scott decided to stop at about 10,000 feet and wait while Ben continued to the top solo, booting it up for the final 700 feet or so of vertical.
He was rewarded with this view at the top, which he shot with his iPhone’s panorama feature at about 10:30 am:
An even better reward was the snow they got to shred on the way down. “It was just heaven from the top down to the heart of Super Bowl and down into Heather Canyon,” McKinley says. “It was total ego snow. You could carve ‘em confidently and let it rip.”
Ben was riding a pair of Folsom Custom Skis from a racer he used to coach at Jesuit High School named Ryan Prentice, who went on to compete on the Freeride Tour and is now a co-owner and marketing director at Folsom. The skis were nice and light, but also solid at high speed. “The performance just blew my mind,” he says.
The video below shows Ben McKinley and Scott Rice enjoying creamy spring snow on Mount Hood in late May. They made it back to the parking lot by 11:30, in time for tee-shirt weather and a nice, cold beer.
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Many thanks to Ben McKinley and Scott Rice for sharing their stories and photos. Shred Hood welcomes backcountry trip reports from the mountain community. To contribute reports, photos or video, e-mail Shred Hood Editor Ben Jacklet.
Last modified: June 1, 2014
