Chance. Accidental. Haphazard. Arbitrary. Casual. Unsystematic. Hit and miss.
Now that I think about it, that pretty much sums up skiing.
Enough of the English lesson. The cool thing about skiing is that you never know... All kinds of crazy (e.g., chance, accidental, haphazard, arbitrary, casual, unsystematic, hit and miss) fun stuff happens.
The cool thing about having a regular mountain is that you never know who you might run into. It could be anybody.
Today was one of those days. We had a little warming trend over the night, and it was still raining as we went through the tunnel (4,000'). The base is 5,000'. Fortunately the rain turned to snow as we got there. I did several laps on the EPA and then headed over to the backside. I took a quick shot down the trees on the left side of Escalator and hit the line. As I was getting ready to load, some random dude behind me with a group hopped on. No problem, you always meet interesting people on lift rides.
As we started up, this random dude asked me my name. Of course I answered "Bob." He said,
"I'm Ethan." I didn't recognize him immediately, with the beard an all, but then I figured it out. Ethan. Kayla's pal Ethan. Ethan, former Willamette Pass snowboard instructor. Ethan, rider extradonaire. Ethan, all star drummer from the PF Flyers whose EP I produced and recorded over winter break 2003. The Ethan who got married a couple of summers ago. Ethan, son of Robert who I frequently see and take runs with. Anyway, Ethan was riding with his wife Rachel (also Kayla's pal) and his mom Barb.
Let me explain why this is random. Ethan moved to Portland a year ago. He's not someone I expect to see, much less jump on the chair next to me.
Ethan can ride. You can't tell from the photo, but the snow is easily three feet deep. Five minutes earlier, Ethan spent 10 minutes extracting himself from a downed tree at the top of the 45-degree slope he's blasting down. Which reminds me, this run is a whole lot steeper than the photo makes it look (see comment about 45-degrees above). Yow.
We took a couple of runs and then they headed down for lunch and I took off looking for my crew: Dylan and his bud Tyler. I found them.
Then they rode.
And rode some more.
T-dog too.
It was a good day for The Pass. Lots of post-holiday folks enjoying the mountain. By noon the snow turned to rain, a hazard of Oregon skiing. By 2 the rain had turned back to snow. The forecast calls for a warming trend over the next few days. We'll monitor the weather closely and decide what to do in the morning.
Ciao for now.
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