This route was dreamed up last year while approaching the end of a hike from Timberline Lodge to Paradise Park and back. That's a nice hike, but having to climb uphill 1400 feet at the end of the day, after already walking about 10 miles, is just awful. I wondered whether it might be possible to travel up and over Zigzag Canyon and then DESCEND to Timberline Lodge. Sure, it's a bit more climbing overall (3300' from the Zigzag River to the top of the canyon), but I'd have fresher legs during the ascent, and it looked like a fun alpine adventure.
So I set out from Timberline Lodge at about 11:00 on Thursday. It was sunny and fairly warm, but windy: mostly a tailwind for the first couple miles to Zigzag. Fortunately, it had rained quite a bit earlier in the week, which really kept the dust down. If there had been this much wind after two months of no rain at all, I think it would have been pretty hard to take.
After hiking into and back out of Zigzag Canyon, I came to the intersection with the Paradise Park Trail at 5700' elevation, and headed uphill on the faint "user trail" that goes up through some aster-filled meadows:
Here's a view down the very green side canyon that you cross on your way up to Paradise Park; on the left side, you can see a big dust cloud being kicked up by the east wind:
The trail just keeps going up the northwest rim, and eventually up around Mississippi Head:
Check out my "trekking pole anemometer"; this photo may have been taken during a particularly strong gust, but even in the calmest moments I swear it was hanging at a 45° angle. I don't really know how to estimate wind speeds, but it had to be in the 30mph range, coming right up out of the canyon. It was MUCH worse when I was walking close to the edge; by staying "inland" a bit, it was more tolerable. But it was almost hard to breathe at times, and tough on the contact lenses.
This photo shows the summit of Hood, the left side of Mississippi Head, and a tiny fragment of my route (I think):
Mississippi Head from the side:
This was actually the first snow patch that I passed. A part of me was tempted to descend into this little draw, but that would have left some steep climbing at the top. Instead, I continued up the ridge on the left, which was probably a good choice:
Looking back down on the three "lobes" of Paradise Park:
Once I was past Mississippi Head, I felt like I must have been done with the climbing, but the GPS and the map told me I was at about 7000' and still had another thousand feet to climb. Bummer.
This is the one spot where really I had a decision to make. I could have gone up the steep snowfield to the right, and then left along the rocky ridge on the upper-right (red), OR gone in more or less a straight line up the snowfields to the left (purple). I chose to go right.
The rest of the ascent was grueling: not terribly steep, but it was all snow and gravel, and I was tired and windburned. It was just one foot in front of the other, sort of like the last 1/4 mile of the Mt. St. Helens climb.
This next picture is pretty close to the "top" of the trip, about 8000' elevation. I traversed the upper edge of this snowfield, whose bottom drops off into the uppermost reaches of Zigzag Canyon:
A view of Hood's summit from 8000':
As soon as I'd traversed across the top of the canyon, I realized that Timberline Lodge had come back into view. That certainly makes getting home easier:
From that point, I could also see the top of the support posts for the Palmer Lift. Elevation-wise, I was across from the middle of Palmer.
So I just had to decide how I was going to get home; there were no actual trails, so I could choose any route I wanted. I could have gone down the southeast edge of Zigzag, but that would mean extra distance and climbing back to TL Lodge again: no thanks! I also could have traversed over to Palmer and gone straight down from there... but in the end I decided to go down sort of diagonally toward Silcox Hut and the top of the Magic Mile. It was the path of least resistance. I found my way down narrow snowfields like this one:
For the most part, I was able to jog/run down the snowy patches, hitting 6-7mph at times. (I also tried sliding on/in a heavy-duty trash bag, but without a decent glissade "chute," that was more trouble than it was worth.) So I kept bounding down the snow; with trekking poles, waterproof hiking boots, and summer gaiters, it was downright FUN. So much better than slogging my way back on the Timberline Trail through Little Zigzag Canyon into a headwind... I covered the last 2 miles in under 45 minutes, which included a couple of breaks to shed clothing layers.
Final tally: about 9.5 miles, 3600 feet of elevation gain if you believe Google Earth.
