The Expedition

After watching it rain all day yesterday, we were enthusiastic about the weather report. It called for freezing levels to drop substantially and for 15" - 24" of new snow at pass levels. I had a good feeling when I woke up and saw the temperature was 35 degrees at our house. That means it will be somewhere around 20 degrees at the pass. The DOT report said 9 inches; The Pass said 15. We decided to see for ourselves.

So we left early. It was snowing hard by Oakridge. People were chaining up at 2000'. The trip up the pass was as bad as I've experienced, but the ski wagon can do anything with the studs on.

We arrived at The Pass to a line of cars backed up on the highway. It was easy to see the problem: some bonehead in an Audi had abandoned his car (no snow tires or chains) in the drop-off area and the cat was broken down on the other side. Pretty standard operating procedure for The Pass... let it snow a bunch and don't bother to plow the lot until it's too deep to do effectively. The got it done... sort of.

The base looks, um, adequate. There's a good two feet.

In short, La Nina delivered.

We got ready and headed for EPA to catch rope drop. Something, however, was not right. Nobody was standing in line and lots of folks were heading for Twilight.

This underscores one of the flaws of having a 480 V 3-phase electric left at the top of the pass. It doesn't function so well when the power is down. It was looking like we would be spending the day riding Twilight with the holiday gapers. Oh the horror.

What you can't see from this photo is that most of those people are bogged down in two feet of fresh snow. The lower mountain is not steep enough to ride with this much snow.

We knew at that moment what had to be done and who would do it. The Expedition was on!

It is probably not much of a mystery to readers, just what this expedition entailed. But, in the event you have yet to catch on...

It entailed bootpacking up 800 feet of vertical through three foot deep snow. We were not in the least bit intimidated. The prospect of untouched lines through three feet of fresh snow was the only alternative.

Initially it was just Dylan and I. We were shortly joined by Brian, our new best buddy on The Expedition. We welcomed his arrival as a fellow brother seeking the best the day had to offer. Besides, having another warm body to break trail was not something we would argue with.

The going was tough.

But the tough kept going. Two more bros joined us about two-thirds of the way up. We got a lot of love for breaking trail that far; they were eager to share the wealth and immediately jumped to the front of the line.

New bro Brian looks back down The Expedition line.

We finally made it to the top. The big question was RTS or Success? It was Success, while others in the line opted for RTS, the wind was blowing a gale straight up it--our evaluation was it would be scraped for the first couple hundred feet and visibility would be sketchy at best.

Dylan braves the elements at the summit.

We ripped down Success in less than two minutes. 90 minutes of hard bootpacking for two minutes of ripping. On the balance...totally worth it!

So worth it, we did it again. The second trip up was like walking up an 800' column of slippery stairs. Much easier than breaking trail, but by no means easy.

Dylan ponders the value of The Expedition.

The weather is even more gnarly as we approach the summit for Round II.

Staging for the second run. We opted for Timburr this time--less wind exposure.

Dylan rips 3' of fresh I:

II:

III:

The snow was bottomless, but not in the sense that you sunk to the bottom. The float was outstanding--I didn't sink in more than a foot or so on any turn. Some of the best powder, and hardest earned, that I've ever skied.

We needed a break after 1600' of vertical (probably more like 2500' given the fact that every step smashed down more snow) and headed to the lodge. The lower mountain was ravaged and very difficult due to a combination of poor visibility and being hammered from all the hiking and skiing.

We retired to the lodge for lunch where we found out that we were soaked inside and out. Inside from sweating during the climb up, outside from, well, all the snow. We decided we'd had enough. The prospects of EPA opening today were slim to none and bootpacking up Success twice was all we could muster. The walk to the car was as cold as anything I've experienced in years.

Today was a new record for us: three runs in three hours and out. We probably got all of 3,000' vertical feet, but it was worth the effort.

With any luck the power will be on tomorrow and we'll get to ski everything that got left behind today.