Hood So side - with Russ
5/2/04

Because Russ was taking some newbies, we took the cat.  Lazy, man!

met at 1:00AM, dropped off at Palmer around 1:30.  Dawn at Hogsback,
summit at 6:30, just 30 minutes after sunrise (rats!).  Despite the
warm forecast (freezing level 11,000, it was cold - I needed more than
the shorts and ltwt underwear bottoms.  New aluminum crampons were
great!  Down to the hogsback at 8, before the crowds hit - we probably
had thre parties ahead of us.  Started skiing about 8:30, way too
early - the sun had just hit the bottom of the hogsback, and it was a
pretty hard crust - all chopped up from climbers passing Crater Rock.
I sat a while and waited for it to warm, but it was even harder just
below and west of Crater Rock, so I walked down about 400 feet of the
steepest part, then started making long traverses across the Zigzag
glacier - aptly named!  Over to illumination saddle, back to the
moraine, back to Ilumination rock, then it finally started to soften
some and I could start making turns and onyl crashing half the time,
sticking to the east side of Zigzag.  Before I realized it I was below
the top of the Palmer, so I traversed back over to the ungroomed area
west of the lifts and finally started to ski well.

Basically, Hood whipped my tail again - literally!  At least this time
the pack didn't really seem to be a problem.  If I had waited until
10AM to start down from the Hogsback, it would have been pretty good.

Back to the cars about 10:30, at least this time jsut ahead of the
climbers, and only 45 minutes behind Russ, who skiied the whole thing
raget well on his randonee gear.