Winter might be here!

Saturday, February 21, 2014

Well, it finally snowed a bunch last week. A foot Tuesday night, and more Wednesday and Thursday. I had my schedule set up so I could go up on Thursday, but alas, they were not open until Friday. It looked like the lucky folks that went up Friday got a pretty good day in.

By Friday afternoon it cleared up and got warm. Saturday came nice and sunny so we all piled in and went up to the mountain.
Diane preps for her first day out and it's gonna be sunny.

Diane and Dylan stop on By George. Note they only groomed half the run. The other half was heavy powder with a nice layer of icy crust on the top. Not really skiable.

On our way to the lodge.

Diane swooshes down Swoosh.

Conditions on the groomers were very good. Elsewhere, not so good. In the morning the ungroomed runs were frozen death chunks. They started to soften up in the afternoon and were nearly skiable by the time we left. I spent most of the day skiing with Diane, which was loads of fun.

The good news is that the entire mountain is now open. The bad news is that more rain is in the forecast.

What a season!

Now, for something completely different...

Saturday, February 8, 2014

Well, we got a change in the weather. It started as a couple of inches of snow in town on Thursday evening, which quickly got covered by a layer of ice. Andre closed the UO from 4pm Thursday to 10am Friday. Friday brought another six inches and I mostly got a snow day, which I spent at the studio recording with the Bosworth Brothers since the UO closed again. Lots of fun...but more on that later.

What a difference a week makes. Last week the stick was at 34", this week it's close to 60".  Not enough to be amazing yet, but a whole lot better than we've had all season. Even stranger, we have 10" of snow on the deck at our house but 10 miles east of here, there's no snow. Not so strange, but very annoying is the fact that the City of Eugene doesn't bother to run plows when it snows. So cars a stranded all over and there's basically ruts that you have to drive in.

 Dylan flips out over the new snow.


















II.

 Yea, there's two feet of it and it's really wet and heavy.

Testing out the JJ's in the trees. Conditions were less than ideal--two feet of unconsolidated wet snow. The upside is that skis that are 150 cm at the tip and 100 cm in the middle float really well. Really well. The JJ's are going to be a real kick when we get some good conditions.

I ran into the crew of graduate research assistants that work for me. By this time, I was about ready to leave because I was getting soaked.

They wanted to check out some new terrain so I took them over to Cherokee Ridge.

Erik wasn't quite prepared for the conditions. He'll probably reconsider following me around in the future.

Northern Exposure was in pretty good shape today. I got a couple of shots down it that were really fun. Dylan enjoyed it too. He missed the first two runs down because he his boot broke and he had to to rent some. I left a little for him...


















Driving wasn't a big deal until we got back to town. It's a huge slushy mess out there and from what I can tell the City road crews are perpetually on break.  We missed the full-fledged ice storm today, but it was still here when we got back. Lots of downed trees and ice falling. Pretty spooky. I hope our trees make it through.

We had one of these last year and lost a major limb off of one of the Japanese Maples out front. 

The forecast calls for more rain this week, so hopefully we're into full swing for the season.

Handstands and other such shenanagins

Saturday, February 1, 2014

Dylan busts a move.

















It's February now and the cumulative snowfall for the year is a paltry 63".  Tim the owner had a steely attitude when I chatted with him yesterday. He was looking at the upside--no hat, no coat. I'm still a little amazed they they've able to operate at all.

We got a little snow last week (~4") but Dylan and I didn't have any great expectations that it would be significantly better. So, we were surprised when it was. The new snow covered the ice layer which is providing a solid base, and conditions were packed powder on the back.

Nice and sunny in the parking lot.

The conditions on the backside don't look too horrible.

Except for a few trees and rocks and other hazards.

This explains a lot.

 It's not all bad.






















 One upside is the ability to leap small trees and large rocks.

The forecast is calling for a little more snow between now and Wednesday. A little will keep things running, but what is really needed is a couple of good Cascade dumps in the 24" to 36" range. I remain optimistic that it will happen eventually.

Maybe even before next weekend.