Camping and skiing mt hood prep

oldworld_newlife

Active member
I'm seriously interested in skiing and camping hood this summer. I live in Wisconsin. How much would be good to have saved for the drive out and camping out for like a month ?

Tips from anyone who has been there welcomed
 
13988250:midwesternmaniac said:
Most likely a tent

Just get a good tent that holds heat and find some kind of heat source. Also, if your camping next to the lifts, don’t forget to stay relatively close to the toilets
 
I'd say have at least $1,000 saved up just in case. Gas prices could go up by then and you never know what you'll have to buy at a walmart in washington last minute. Food is going to be the most expensive piece of the trip, and sometimes you'll find it easier to go to subway than cook at the camp lol. Also if you hit a streak of rainy days getting a hotel room on the coast is worth it since you won't be able to ski and camp will be 35º and rainy. Mt Hood RV park for showers and a hot tub, monthly pass is like $40 i think. Also avoid Lolo pass at all costs, tweakers everywhere. Almost got robbed there. A lot of the random forest roads are good to camp on. Zig Zag cafe early bird special is $4 for a super dank and big breakfast.
 
My van about died the one time I started heading up the mountains heading to timberline so tune up on your vehicle before you go would be good.

Also if your heading west Stop at beartooth summer sessions. Would make a dope trip super dope.

Good sleeping pad, bag, and a tent that works well in the rain. It can rain a lot there. Jetboil so you can make lots of ramen and coffee.
 
13988262:john18061806 said:
I'd say have at least $1,000 saved up just in case. Gas prices could go up by then and you never know what you'll have to buy at a walmart in washington last minute. Food is going to be the most expensive piece of the trip, and sometimes you'll find it easier to go to subway than cook at the camp lol. Also if you hit a streak of rainy days getting a hotel room on the coast is worth it since you won't be able to ski and camp will be 35º and rainy. Mt Hood RV park for showers and a hot tub, monthly pass is like $40 i think. Also avoid Lolo pass at all costs, tweakers everywhere. Almost got robbed there. A lot of the random forest roads are good to camp on. Zig Zag cafe early bird special is $4 for a super dank and big breakfast.

Ye heaps of nice advice here. I’ve camped Lolo a bunch and have never had a tweaker encounter but I could see what you’re talking about, would love to hear that story of almost getting robbed... It’s pretty far from the hill though so I don’t like camping with such a mega uphill to TLine anyway. RV park is a big key but be careful of management if you don’t have a legit pass, they’re pretty crazy about poachers after the last few years. Zig Zag cafe is a godsend as well but they removed 4 dollar breakfast from the menu in 2017 and it was 5 bucks when I ordered it that summer, so I’m not sure but they might not do it anymore at all. Find some friends for a carpool to the hill.
 
I have been doing Hood camping trip since I was 16 so shoot my a PM for the finer details. Right now it sounds like you need to weigh out the logistics and cost...

Summer pass is 900 and day tickets are about 70. So this right here is the bulk of the cost. You need to know about the spring pass at Hood. Its under $200 for three months. April is super prime, the snow will be melted so you can camp and it rains less this month.

Later in the summer the public park really thaws out. At some point the snow no longer reaches the bottom of the lift so you are supposed to pay for a lift ticket and hike 100m in dirt for each lap. All the snow is pushed up for windells and the snowboard camp. So late summer trips are not ideal. Early summer is really solid, but super spendy for daily lift tickets.
 
13988262:john18061806 said:
. Also avoid Lolo pass at all costs, tweakers everywhere. Almost got robbed there. A lot of the random forest roads are good to camp on.

How did you almost get robbed on Lolo?
 
13988726:riverarunsdeep said:
How did you almost get robbed on Lolo?

alright story time. sorry if anything is incoherent i've had a few drinks... So me and my homies went to portland on a rainy day to check things out and we went to burntside skatepark to watch some people rip. Not gonna drop real homie names so lets say my homie ryan was talking to this guy at the park for awhile and happened to drop the location of our campsite to the tweaker named titus (real name). He kinda looked like tanner hall but pale with short hair and a shitty shave job. He said he was going to hang out with us... we go back to the campsite and there's no sign of titus thankfully but later in the night we see a truck with a topper roll up but nobody got out and the truck left. I spend the night wondering if the dude is gonna jump me in my sleep or not but all is good and I wake up the next morning..

I'm the first one up in the morning and i notice the same truck with the topper roll up and i think to myself "oh fuck, it's titus." I said "hey how's it going?" he said that he spent the night in lolo pass in his truck. He asked me if I smoked and I said yeah since i'm on vaca in oreganj. then he asked me "do you shoot?" and I just said no... I'd never try heroin, let alone off a dirty needle. a few other homies wake up and we had a little wake n bake with titus. but he was weird about weed, he would put a whole nug in the bowl and said that's the only way he smokes it, never grinds it up. So we're all a little baked and we're thinking about going to get some coffee at the rhodo shop.

We invite him over and right as we are about to leave he says his truck won't start, and it doesn't (because his slick ass probably pulled out a fuse). He said he's just going to stay at the campsite while we get coffee but we didn't trust him at all. We tell him that we can call a mechanic for him and he says he'll call his brother who's a mechanic. At this point we know he's up to some shit. We tell him that we might call the police and then he gets frantic. He screams into his truck "START IT START IT" and this woman pops out of the back of the truck to start it. He didn't mention anything about her the entire time we were hangin. His truck starts and then we leave telling him to meet us there.

But we didn't go to the coffee shop, we turned up the pass instead of down, waited 10 minutes and then went back to our site. Luckily he was gone and all our stuff was there. We packed up everything and yeeted straight to the coast for a break from all this shit. We saw his truck outside the coffee shop as we left and that was the last we saw of him. The dude was definitely scheming to have us leave so he could take our shit. Luckily for us he was unarmed and not a violent guy. We relocated our site to a place with 40 or 50 other campers that we knew.

Also another tweaker i ran into that was really funny. I was walking through the wood around our campsite and I noticed this other guy walking on the road. I thought he was one of my homies so I started whistling at him just for fun. I got closer and realized it wasn't one of my homies buy a dude in his 50s or 60s on a total shroom or lsd trip. I got up to him and he looks at me with his glossy eyes and says "WHAT'S THE WORD, BIRD?" I know this would've been the perfect opportunity to drop surfin bird but I was a little spooked and said "he went over there (and pointed in a random direction)" he just stared at me for 10 seconds and then continued walking. Lolo locals are wack lol
 
13988820:john18061806 said:
alright story time.

Dude fuckin sketchhhh. I can't tell you how many times I've camped along lolo and the surrounding FR's. But that could be one of the sketchier stories i've heard. I've had a few in other parts of surrounding portland forest roads of people showing up at 1am and start shooting guns and stuff.
 
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