Why Are So Many Climbers in Trouble on Mount Hood This Year?

May 29, 2022

The most popular route up Oregon’s Mount Hood, an 11,249-foot active volcano, passes by two giant cavities that exhaust lethal sulfur dioxide and hydrogen sulfide. The Devils Kitchen fumarole sits just climber’s right of Hogsback, a steep snow ridge that runs from 10,500 feet up to the Pearly Gates, the final chute to the summit. The Hot Rocks fumarole, where the heat from the earth never allows snow to accumulate, is just climber’s left. On a clear, windless day your eyes water and your nose stings from the sulfur that wafts across the flank of the most frequented area—collectively called the South Side Routes—on one of the most climbed glaciated peaks in America. Outside Online