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Wondering if anyone can help solve a bit of mystery/curiosity from my recent climb on Mount Hood. Maybe someone out there has had a similar experience and can shed some light on it.
I was ascending just below Devil's Kitchen at about 4am. The sky was crystal clear in every direction and the snow was very firm. From somewhere to my left (West, toward Illumination Rock) I heard a single loud, deep BOOM. (It actually reminded me of a heavy artillery impact from my army days). It's hard to tell how far away it was, but it sounded like it came from beyond Illumination Rock. There was no flash and nothing else that I could hear (like a landslide or rock fall). Just that loud boom.
My first thought was explosive avalanche control, but a) I don't know if they even do that on Hood and b) the conditions didn't seem to warrant that, much less in the middle of the night. Then I thought rock fall, but damn.. if it was, it had to be a HUGE boulder free falling a long way. But then there was no subsequent noise, so that made me question that theory.
So yeah, just curious if anyone has any ideas other than "you were hypoxic/sleep walking/drunk and hearing things."

What day was it? Was this the October ascent?

One place to start might be the seismic reports. For example, last Thursday, there was a 1.0 earthquake recorded just west of Mount Hood, but the report says it was probably an explosion (presumably man made). In this example, if the blast was big enough to register on the seismic report, it would definitely have been audible from the slopes Mt Hood.

Supersonic boom from a military jet? Just guessing here.

Could have been a number of things. The two most likely, from my experience on Hood, would be a chunk of the mountain falling off or sonic boom from a jet- I've heard some pretty serious BOOMS from both, on le montagne.

August two years ago, I was on the summit when a chunk of rock about the size of a city bus fell off the NW face, down to the Eliot below. It was so boomy and echoed so hard I felt like it should have been audible for 100 miles (probably more like 2)

I'll have to check the USGS website, Scott. It did sound like one I heard in San Francisco once; just a single bang. I thought about a sonic boom, but I never heard any sort of echo or reverberations, but that's possible too.
Wow--that is a big rock fall, Ben. Can't even imagine what that sounded/looked like (especially if you were lower on the mountain and saw a city bus falling).
I'll probably never know for sure what it was but it was a little spooky to hear something that loud up there.

Its called glaciers moving my friend. They are noisy beasts.

This reminded me of when I was climbing ropeless high on Mt Baker's Coleman Headwall and I heard a very loud 'boom'. I planted my tools expecting to be swept off the face by a calving serac. Instead, a military jet flew right overhead. Scared the bejezzus out of me.

^^^ that is the dumbest thing I have ever heard lol

Matt Lemke wrote:^^^ that is the dumbest thing I have ever heard lol

I knew it! You are one of them. Calling it dumb is just an attempt to hide the truth.

^^^^^^^^^^^^^


YEAH ... he was HOOD-WINKED by Lemurians ---

mconnell wrote:

Matt Lemke wrote:^^^ that is the dumbest thing I have ever heard lol

I knew it! You are one of them. Calling it dumb is just an attempt to hide the truth.

smh

I'm going with the subterranean-hordes-of-Nazis theory. At least that would explain the artillery. Lemurians usually throw fairy dust, in my considerable experience. They can't hood wink me. Too smart