Winding down

Well, the season is winding down. The recent storms got us another weekend. Dylan and I headed up for the afternoon.

The skies were partly cloudy, but it was about 45 degrees.

Snow squalls on the horizon.

Dylan attempted 3's all day off the kicker. This is the best one he did.

Dylan tackle Success.

I tackle Success.

Dropping the cornice off the top.

Shifty!

Whoa!

It was nice to get up and do a few laps before the season ends, but I've been thinking all week about last Saturday and nothing about today got me too worked up. Besides, I'm kind of frustrated with the resort yet again. They had their end of season pass special going and then cut it off. A typical business practice would be to state when your special ends. Not so with Willamette Pass... better to just kind of randomly do things. I got no satisfaction from Guest Services. They gave me a line about running it concurrently with Hoodoo's special.

Whatever.

We'll head up tomorrow for a few hours and then get on with Spring.

Storm of the Decade!

At least that is what Mt. Hood Meadows claimed when they got a 33" dump earlier this week.

3 April, 2010 7:00 am

I've been watching the weather report all week. Yesterday's called for 18" to 32" overnight. It may have delivered. The ODOT pass info indicates 11" at the top of the pass. The ski area is claiming >2'. More than 2 feet, that's an opportunity that doesn't come around that often.

My plan this weekend was to work. That's out the window this morning. I'm going to put the studs back on and go check it out. As they say, wild, wild horses couldn't drag me away...

More later...

3 April, 2010 3:15 pm

Well, wow. All I can say is you don't get too many days like today in a lifetime. I've had maybe half a dozen in 43 years. Dylan's been with me for four of those. This right here. This we like. Two plus feet of pow with two sets of tracks through it. One is a patroller; those bastards always get to poach the best. Oh well, they've earned it.

Let's check the stats. Two weeks ago, the cumulative snowfall for the season was about 160." As of today it was 246." I'll spare you the arithmetic: that's 86" of new snow in two weeks. Seven feet. S-e-v-e-n f-e-e-t. Two weeks ago, the Army Corps was saying the reservoirs wouldn't fill this year. Claimed that they did not see any prolonged precipitation patterns. This week they're all full except for Lookout Point. Looks like the Corps is all wet. Moving along, snowfall in the past 24 hours: >24." As it turns out that was conservative.

Deep.

Deepest.

This is not a ruse people. I didn't shove my poles in extra hard for effect. That's how deep the snow was on SDN. I got out the tape just to see how it measured up. 40." Forty-freakin' inches. I'm not sure I've ever skied in that much snow... until today.

Well then, let's see how it rides.

That looks like fun. Let's have a closer look.

Holy rooster tail batman, that's some pow!

And an even closer look.

Dusted!

Contrails.

Cuttin' up SDN. You can't tell it from the video, but the slope is about 50 degrees. That's about what it took to get enough momentum to move through this stuff--even though it was Colorado type fluff.

We spent most of the day in the woods.

Where the snow is deep, and the turns are fresh.

As is typical of Willamette, the didn't drop the rope on the backside until about 10:30. We took one ride down the escalator, and then headed for the glade on Northern Exposure, and the cliff under the lift. This was Dylan's day to fly.

I skied down below after an epic 20-turn shred in bottomless pow and stopped in waist deep snow. As I was looking up, a kid hucks off the big drop on the right side and throws a perfect front flip. Well, perfect except for one detail: the snow is so deep he makes a neck deep bomb hole and loses his skis. He spent the next several hours looking for them. I have a feeling he didn't find them.

Dylan shreds the cliff.

Note the kid in the foreground. He's Mr. Front Flip looking for his boards.

Neighbor John rode along. He braved the pow on his teles.

For me, there was no question what was going to happen today. I left the teles in the garage. Like many before, John got abandoned in the parking lot.

Many a rider has asked the question: is it possible to have too much snow? I know what you're thinking, psssh, never. We'll today pushed the boundaries of that theory. There were places where it it might have been. Note that I didn't say it was, I just implied that it might have been too much. The key axiom related to this theory is that the deeper it gets, the steeper it needs to be. We spent a good part of the day on the steepest parts of the mountain.

Eight days ago I spoke to the best powder day of the season. I spoke too soon. Today was at a minimum a once a year day; in some places it's a once a decade day. We seem to get a lot of them here in Oregon, so let's cheer for Ullr, God of Snow, who brought it today.