Mt. Hood

 

Description:  Given Mt. Hood's close proximity to Portland and many options for a 1 day climb or ski descent - it makes it an excellent mountain for playing in the spring.  The east slopes gets soft early when its warm ~ 8 am, so if planning to ski or climb them, start early.  Also given that you can do many different cary over options linking the basic climb, or more significant ice climbs, it makes for an excellent way to link up a  big mountain climb with some epic spring ski mountaineering.  

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When living in Portland in 2012-2014 I did  handful of ascents of the basic old-chutes route in order to link it up with the Wy' East and Cooper Spur ski descent.  Then either skied out to Mount Hood Meadows or Traversed back to Timberline.  Those slopes provide an excellent ski descent with the Cooper spur being much more consequential.  A few other even steeper and more exposed descents exist from there as well. 

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I also did an ascent of the Sandy Glacier Headwall in 2012, which was a fantastic climb, But we did it as a ski cary-over and it made for a very exhausting day to add the Skis as the Sandy Glacier requires you to make a descending traverse a 1/4 of the way around the mountain from Illumination saddle and then climb directly back up.  Our timing was to late in the day for Wy'East so we just descended the normal route to Timberline.