I settled on Mount Hood for my Saturday new-to-me peak after flipping through Alan Kane’s Scrambles book. I wanted to do a fun scramble before the snow came and I knew this would be my last window for dry peaks for awhile.
You can see Mount Hood when you are standing on King Creek Ridge and looking west. I remember once I talked to someone on the summit about Mount Hood. Anyway there are a few options for reaching the peak.
Mount Hood is part of the Opal Range in Kananaskis. This is one of the few peaks in the range that do not require ropes. This mountain was named after Rear Admiral Hood, who was commander of HMS Invincible, which was sunk in the First World War.
Summit approaches
One option is to start from King Creek (across from where you would start if you are doing the ridge) and approach the summit along trail that follows the river or you can go up King Creek Ridge, then down to the col and head up Mount Hood.
Initially I thought it would be a fun loop to go along the creek where you pass through a canyon, summit Mount Hood, then up to King Creek Ridge and descend back to the parking lot.
At the last minute, I decided that we would do a loop starting with a hike up to the ridge. My friend would meet me on King Creek Ridge because he was running late.
Reaching the ridge summit was the easy part. Getting down from the ridge to connect to the trail up to Mount Hood …. well … that took a little longer than we thought it would especially because we missed the typical descent route. Oops. (Even longer than usual because of my wonky ankle doesn’t like the uneven downs.)
After some route finding, we made it to a trail from King Ridge to Mount Hood. Eventually it met up with a clear trail from King Creek. Honestly they look more like animal trails than official trails. I don’t think Mount Hood gets a lot of traction.
Then we climbed and we climbed some more. The climbing wouldn’t have been so bad if I were in better shape and a fully functioning left ankle or at least that’s what I am telling myself.
We followed the cairns when we saw them. Mostly we were using a Gaia map and referencing with AllTrails. I brought my Alan Kane book with me so I could check that as well if we were completely off track. Thankfully our combined route-finding methods did the trick.
Scramble to the summit
When we got to the scramble part, the cairns were harder to see so we ended up going off the trail many times on the way up. There were a few tricky parts but overall it was a pretty solid scramble if you are comfortable with loose rock or scree.
The last 300 metres were the hardest for us both. I was sucking air. The wind had picked up and it started to snow. We spent less than five minutes at the top. A fog was rolling in and we knew we had to get down before the weather completely turned.
Like always it was easier to see a clear trail heading down then when we were headed up. The gully looked crazy with the scree and I did not want to tangle with the scree so we retraced our steps. Going down didn’t take as long as we thought it would.
Finishing in the dark
We were in good spirits when I said let’s stick with the plan to finish through the canyon. Honestly I was tired of climbing and the 100 metres or so to King Creek Ridge did not excite me.
For whatever reason, I thought it was only three kilometres but it ended up being almost six kilometres. We had to cross the river about six times. I do not recommend going through the canyon if you want to do Mount Hood especially if you are tagging King Creek Ridge first.
And at this time of year, it gets darker sooner. Because of my ankle, I wasn’t comfortable running yet so it took us a long time to get through the canyon. Thankfully one of us (not me) had the good sense of bringing a headlamp.
All in all it was a great day of adventure. But if I am to do Mount Hood again I would definitely skip the canyon.
Metrics: 15 kilometres and 1,615 elevation gain. Moving time 6:30 minutes.
Note: This post is not meant to be a definitive guide to summiting Mount Hood so please do your research before attempting. Please reach out, if you have any questions.