Local
Mount Hood’s exposed rock follows record-low snowpack and summer heat
The Palmer Snowfield was nearly bare in early October after Oregon’s record-low 2025-26 snowpack and a summer heat wave. Researchers say the scene reflects a long-term decline in snow and glaciers, though a single season’s conditions cannot be attributed to climate change alone.
Mount Hood’s Palmer Snowfield was almost completely bare on Oct. 8, leaving the mountain’s upper slopes looking gray from Portland and prompting concern about what another difficult snow season could bring.
Timberline Lodge closed the Palmer Express chairlift on July 19, its earliest closing day, after snow levels fell too low. The snowfield, where ski and snowboard camps usually continue into summer, has not been a natural year-round snowfield for many years; Timberline now moves snow from elsewhere on the mountain to maintain it.
The view followed Oregon’s record-low snowpack during the 2025-26 winter and a summer heat wave. Robin Cressy, a videographer who has filmed summer skiing on Mount Hood since the 1980s, said the bare slopes were alarming but not unprecedented. He said a strong winter can restore snow cover, while adding that after last winter, “we just want a normal winter.”
Researchers say the conditions fit a broader pattern of warming temperatures reducing snowpack and shrinking glaciers, but caution against assigning any single season directly to climate change without detailed analysis. Human-caused warming raises the temperature baseline and makes heat waves and snow droughts more frequent, while precipitation still varies considerably from year to year.
Mount Hood’s glaciers have not disappeared because they look gray. Geology professor emeritus Andrew Fountain of Portland State University said the Sandy and Reid glaciers are likely obscured by rock and debris. Glaciers are thick masses of ice, he said, and in low-snow years they become smaller rather than vanishing like seasonal snow.
Oregon has 25 glaciers, mostly clustered around Mount Hood, Mount Jefferson and the Three Sisters, down from 36 in the 1980s. Their meltwater helps keep rivers and streams cold through summer, supporting fish and contributing to drinking-water supplies. Rapid melting can also carry sediment into waterways and increase flood risks.
The coming winter outlook remains uncertain. A strong El Niño can bring different precipitation patterns to Washington and British Columbia than to California, leaving Oregon’s forecast harder to pin down. Oregon State University climate science professor Philip Mote said current predictions point to an unusually warm winter, which could limit how much snow accumulates and raise the risk of another poor snow year.
That does not mean Mount Hood will be bare every fall. But researchers say the long-term loss of snow and ice matters beyond the mountain’s appearance: it can affect summer water temperatures, aquatic life and water supplies across the region.