Climbing Mt Hood
So the apex of my adventure was to climb Mt Hood. I met up with my team (the two guys pictured above), split group gear (my final pack is picture 1), and we hiked up to roughly 8,500 feet to make camp (picture 2). We then went over some mountaineering techniques, and the logistics and plan for the ascent. We "went to bed" at around 6 pm to get some sleep since we were going to start our day at 12:45 am. Unfortunately I wasn't able to fall asleep but that's fine. We got up, had a quick breakfast, and climbed our way up the mountain using the light from our headlamps. Unfortunately when we got to the Hogsback at 10,700 feet at around 4:30 am the snow and ice on the very steep final 500 ft was assessed to be too unstable and therefore unsafe so we had to call it (Pictures 5-7 were taken at the Hogsback when the sun started to come out). We then started making our way down when it started to get light out (a little before 5 am). We took a break at the Devil's Kitchen (pictures 8-13) and continued our descent until we reached our camp and broke everything down (picture 16) and made our way to the base of the mountain where the lodge was (picture 17). For full image please click on pictures.