Out of Bounds.

I almost turned over and went back to sleep this morning after checking the snow report at 6:45. A paltry 1" of fresh. The weather report called for 10"-18." But it is raining hard in town, and I got a good feeling. We go anyway.

As we pass through the tunnel, the rain turns to serious snow. The truck in front of us breaks loose, and then spins out. They stop heading 180 degrees from where they started and just keep going...hopefully back to town. Better for us; the road is now clear.

28 degrees. Snow is falling. Hard. Anticipation is building, as the Eagle Peak Express has not yet opened. It's 9:45 when they start loading and we are there.

Stokage.

The 1" is more like 6" on the front side, with serious blizzard conditions at the top.

And more like 14" on the back side. My poles are nearly buried.

Dylan tests out his wakeboarding technique in the 14" of fresh and wet. I think he's got it down.

Work it!

We got three untracked runs down the 45-degree "Down Under"--a nicely spaced glade with lots of good slots. Dylan drops in, takes three turns and literally gets buried by his wake as it comes down to greet him.

Dylan has been looking at the backside cliff all season. Today he tried what will probably soon be a new freeboarding event: Cliff Falling.

He got high marks for the falling, and even higher marks for the awesome recovery move at the end.

Gimme a pillow.

Now, to today's topic. Out of bounds. All ski areas have boundaries. They are for our protection. These are areas that are not patrolled and may pose various risks. Like all ski areas, Willamette Pass has out of bounds areas. Many of them are named: Cherokee Ridge, SDN, SDS, Motel 8, to name a few. Willamette doesn't have ropes, they just courteously provide signs like the one at the top of this posting.

Out of bounds is where you head on a powder day to get the sweet untracked lines. Take Cherokee Ridge for example. Head down Boundary Pass on the backside and ski straight past the out of bounds sign to 600 vertical feet of tree powder heaven. Dylan and I were the first ones down this morning, which meant I had to break trail and he had to billy goat through the flat parts. It was worth it:

We got several untouched lines though the trees today. The cool thing about Cherokee is that if you get into a slot that someone has already poached, you just go over one tree and you're back into the freshies. It was awesome.

Dylan does his snowman impression.

Then drives me home.

It was cold, and snowy, but nonetheless an epic day. It was one of those days when it snowed so hard that your tracks get covered up between each run. It snowed 4" between when we arrived at 9:30 and left at 2:30. Gotta love that--even if it was a little (actually a lot) wet.

Two weeks left until the "official" end of season. One of the patrolers told me on a ride up that we would probably get a couple weekends after that.

I hope so. Until then, you can find me out of bounds.