The NW Alpine Blog of Alpine Pursuits — oregon

In the winter season that just continued to give to us ice and alpine climbers, we tried to zero in on another objective. We had always heard "The Pencil" come up as the obvious unclimbed line on the north side of Mt. Hood.

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My buddy Tim Bemrich and I were debating objectives one winter weekend.  Portland had been in a serious cold spell and many climbers were taking advantage of a freshly frozen over Columbia River Gorge scene.  We debated joining in the Gorge fun, but we both had slightly bigger ambitions for this weather window. It seemed like a great, and somewhat rare, opportunity to finally check out the mysterious Black Spider Headwall on Mt. Hood.

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On any sunny spring weekend the easy access to Mt. Hood's Timberline Lodge lures throngs of people looking to slog and ski their way up the iconic mountain. But venture away from the South Side to any other point on the compass and your chances of seeing another soul are greatly reduced.

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By Bill Amos

In 2011 Tyler Adams called me raving about a group of ultra-chossy towers outside of Crooked River Ranch in Central Oregon. Tyler was always psyched to climb the most rotten and unappealing rock, so a group of us headed out. That day Tyler led the second ascent of the Eagle's Claw, definitely the most aesthetic tower in the area, via a new route. The A4X route included 30 feet of small beaks pounded into diminutive seams with ground fall potential. I was able to clean most of them with a light tug. 

We intended to re-visit Tower Town together and shoot some more video, but before we had the opportunity to, Tyler was killed when the small plane he was piloting crashed. We put together this short video of that day. You can read more about Tower Town on Tyler's blog.

Still photos are courtesy of Matthew Van Biene, Michael Layton, Scott Robertson and Nate Tack. Dan Gaston gave a patient belay.

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