Did I say that it snowed a lot this year? At least it did at the higher elevations. Bachelor ended up with over 500" on the season - over 40' of snow. When I heard that Bachelor would be opening July 4th I was intrigued. Diane was in Florida, so I didn't really have an agenda for the day. It was a toss up between running the Butte-to-Butte (yet again) and going skiing.
I've run the Butte-to-Butte many times on the 4th, but I've never been skiing. It was a pretty easy choice.
Lifts were scheduled to spin from 8am - 2pm. Typically Bachelor is a 3+ hour drive, but this time of year the Cascade Lakes Highway is open which cuts off at least 20 miles. Plus, Cascade Lakes Highway is pretty much a straight shot and it's remote enough to not have heavy patrols. The only downside was getting up at 4:30.
I left Eugene a little after 5 am and get there in 2 hours and 20 minutes. A new land speed record.
Mt. Bachelor from Sparks Lake.
The parking lot at 7:30. I was a few cars from the lodge, but it was filling up quick. Apparently lots of other people thought it would be fun to ski on the 4th.
The view up Red Chair from the parking lot. The base looks a bit thin at the bottom and a little inconsistent up top.
One day only!
I met my friend, Nick, in the parking lot. It was good motivation to get up and go knowing I would have a ski buddy. Nick works for the City of Bend and his brother lives in Steamboat.
I was brave enough to go to short sleeves, but not to ski in shorts. Corn snow will grind you up fast.
Skiing was pretty pedestrian. Typical late spring conditions, or early summer as it was. The snow was pretty heavy and thick. Not so much you couldn't push it around though.
Festivity ensues. Apparently Bend has an unsanctioned event called the "Freedom Festival" where people dress up in costumes and ride their bikes around downtown. Sounds like an anarchic version of the Tour de Fat in FoCo. Locals kept referring to it as the 'shit show.' While it seemed amusing, it wasn't amusing enough to get me to drive down to Bend after skiing.
Nick and a couple of his friends. One thing about being a local is you seem to know everyone.
The run back to the lift wasn't much more than a snocat wide strip of snow they pushed down. Better than downloading!
My ticket came with a lift ride in the Mountain Bike park. I brought my bike so I could check it out. There was still snow up higher, so they only had a small portion of it open.
That was all for the better. It turned out like I expected--set up for people that have downhill bikes with 12" of travel and full body armor. In other words, not me. The first set of curves were reinforced with concrete blocks and required full commitment to go through the banks. I didn't have that level of commitment and feared for my health.
I did one run and decided that I best limit my mountain biking adventures to cross-country riding.
All in all it was a great day. I can check off skiing on the 4th as something I've now done. I would not hesitate to do it again!
Day 2 of the spring skiing extravaganza. Rolled out of bed about 7am for the 8am start. Living in the parking lot is pretty convenient from that perspective. It was a bit cloudy this morning, which is actually an advantage--the snow held a bit longer before turning to sludge.
Conditions were similar to yesterday. Met up with Kyle in the morning to continue the adventure.
Looking up the Skyliner.
Crowds were not that extensive...everyone was having a good time.
The top of the Summit Chair at 9,000'. The actual summit is a short hike (1/3 mile) and maybe 100' higher. You get access to the bowls from the top. Conditions in the bowls were not super conducive to skiing the 50 degree pitch, so we stuck to the groomers.
All in all, a great way to spend a late May weekend. I'll be back for sure!
May 19, 2017 Mt. Bachelor I rolled into the parking lot as it was getting dark. The party was well in swing by then, but that's ok, I came to ski. I haven't been up since early March, so it was overdue. South Sister and Broken Top loom large over the west parking lot at Mt. Bachelor.
This was the maiden voyage for the rig on a ski adventure. It was also the first time I've had the opportunity to experience the RV life at a ski area. I spent a good portion of my life being opposed to RVs. Diane finally broke me down last summer and we bought one. Turns out they're pretty cool. It's like having your own fully equipped apartment on wheels. Not a bad concept.
May 20, 2017 7:30 am I woke up at 6:45 a bit cold and with an annoying beeping. I'm still working out how all the systems on our rig work. The coach batteries died in the middle of the night. That meant the heat stopped functioning. I don't mind sleeping in the cold up to a point. It wasn't at all uncomfortable. The beeping was the propane leak detector complaining it did not have enough energy to do it's job. You would think they'd still a 9-volt in that to voice that problem. Maybe they do and it's dead. I'll have to check.
I wandered down to the lodge to use the facilities. They we're playing a song that I instantly recognized - Brian Auger's "Happiness is Just Round the Bend." It instantly brightened my mood. It's funny how a piece of music can do that. It probably helps that I've listened to it dozens if not more than 100 times. I checked a live version for this post--and now you can too. Outstanding!
Something's going round inside my head
I think it's somethin' I feel, something unreal
And so I see my world is upside down
But there is nothing to fear, my vision is clear
All my roads lead nowhere, what lies at the end
reach your destination
'cause what you find is your love
It's your birth started again
So get up....get it on.....try it again...
Get up....happiness...is just around the bend
Nothing like a bit of positive motivation to get the day going.
At any rate, it was gloriously sunny and in the high 30's. That's a great start to a day of spring skiing. The base of Pine Martin lift. The orange fences were going up for the annual "Pole, Peddle, Paddle" race. It's a ski/bike/kayak race all rolled into one. According to the official website the PPP is a "relay race with six legs that include alpine skiing/snowboarding, cross-country skiing, biking, running, canoeing/kayaking/stand up paddle boarding, and sprinting to the finish!" More specifically, you start with a quick alpine race (easily the fastest and easiest part), then an 8k XC, then a 22-mile bike ride, then a 5-mile run, then you paddle upstream 1/2 mile...down 3/4 mile then do a sprint to the finish. The tough guys skip the relay part. I think the race is calling Craig Jones.
Something got on the camera. It probably happened on the Silver Falls trip with Doug. I need to be more diligent. Anyway, I went straight to the 9,300' summit. The view to the South. Conditions were a bit scratchy at 8:45 so I decided to go check the lowdown.
The Summit as seen from the Skyliner lift. I did a ride with some interesting guys from Portland. They said the last person told them the owner of Willamette Pass was a jerk. Word, apparently, gets around.
Next run I rode up with a couple of guys from Eugene. I followed them down--they were skiing faster than I normally do, which is saying something. I ran into them two runs later and we spent the rest of the day together. Turns out they also enjoy the RV life and were parked a little way up the lot from me. My new ski buddies, Kyle and Jeremy.
There's a forest fire just below those clouds. Seems a bit early for that--possibly a controlled burn. We'll see what the deal is tomorrow.
South Sister and Broken Top in the midday light. I forget how Mt. Bachelor is one of the few places in Oregon where you feel like there's truly an alpine environment. The Cascades are considerably understated compared to the Rockies. They have an subtle beauty that is remarkable.
Skiing closed at 1:30 pm due to the fact the snow can get extremely sticky this time of year. The view of the summit from the base again.
I went back to the rig. Jeremy and Kyle invited me for nachos and beer, but I elected for coffee and work instead. I must be getting old. Or, just more familiar with the effects of drinking in the afternoon. It usually results in napping or early bedtime. The base is still significant--it towers over the cars in the parking lot.
After work, I went and visited my new found friends and borrowed a bike tire pump. I brought my bike because I knew the mountain closed early and figured I might do a little ride. I did--a four-mile round trip do the Sunrise Lodge. The party down there was, well different. Teepees and mini-pipes. And a lot of tents. Best I can guess is a bunch of skateboarding hippies.
I'll get up and ski again tomorrow. I'm hoping to meet up with my colleagues from the City of Bend. Either way, it will be fun.
Ethan texted me Monday asking if I wanted to go up again on Wednesday. The forecast looked right--cold temps and a rain pattern that would carry through Tuesday and end Tuesday night. By Tuesday the forecast was for sun and higher temps. It had also snowed a bunch by then, but I wasn't sure how much. It was enough for me to commit.
I got up Wednesday at 6:30 and checked the snow report. The DOT report wasn't much to get excited about, but the resort reported 18". That's enough to get a powder hound worked up. The forecast also called for it to get up to 52 degrees in town, which meant that it would likely warm up by late morning or early afternoon and consolidate all that snow. Thus, the early bird gets the pow.
I was running a little late and met Ethan at the LCC lot at 7:20. He gave me a hard time, but I knew we had plenty of time to drive up, get our passes, and get in line before rope drop. When we arrived at the parking lot, there were maybe 80 cars there. We were going to share a powder day with 200 of our best friends (or at least people that had the same idea we did).
I did a snow check on the way to the lift--it was definitely 18". Like last week, there was a more consolidated lower layer and a lighter top layer. Not exactly blower pow, but seemed like it would ski just fine. Especially on the JJ's which are 136mm at the tip. They ride a bit like waterskis.
Waiting in line. I commented to the kid in the middle that my parents never let me play hooky to ski. I'm probably wrong about that; if we did, I've forgotten. They definitely did not take me up on a day excursion on a Wednesday powder day.
I think there is a universal law that you will remember any hooky days you have. I'll definitely remember this day, and would certainly not have done anything at work that was very memorable. More stuff and things. Memories...la-ti-da.
That reminds me of another time I played hooky. I was 15 and had gone to Vail for the weekend with our neighbor, Larry Butler, his girlfriend Lindsey, and Steve Vanscoy. Steve was the QB on our high school football team a few years later. Anyway, his parent's had a house in West Vail across the freeway. It would have been 1976. I'm not sure why mom and dad allowed me to do stuff like that when I was that young, but I thank them for it. It was a lot of trust. To my and my friends credit, we never caused to much trouble and never landed in jail.
Anyway, we have a great two days skiing and it's time to pack up and go on Sunday afternoon. It's snowing really hard at this point. So hard that we determined that it would be extremely dangerous to drive back that evening in the Butler Econoline van. I don't know if that was really the case, but none of us cared--it was going to be an epic powder Monday at Vail. The crowds back then aren't what they are now as the video below indicates.
So, we get up early and head out. It's easily 15" of blower pow and we're shredding on our skinny sticks. All of us were very good skiers even at that early age and we were having a blast. Vail was a huge mountain even back then. I don't remember all the stuff we did, but it involved some back bowl action (this was decades before Blue Sky Basin) and some Highline action.
By mid-morning we found ourselves ver at Northwoods. As the Vail trial map clearly shows, there's some cliff action off of North Rim. This was were the adventure started. Larry, Lindsey and I stopped below one of the cliff bands and somehow Steve ended up on the top. It was big--my recollection (which is thin) was that it was at least 20' if not 25'. Big enough to pucker you up. We dared Steve to hit it, which he eventually did. He dropped it and stuck up to his waist at the bottom. We were howling with laughter.
It looked like the kind of fun that Larry and I needed to have, so we went back up and did it again. When we got to the top of the cliff it was pretty damn scary. Keep in mind that I was 15, probably 5'6 and 120 lbs. Larry when first and skied out of it, then I went. All I remember is that it was a huge adrenaline rush and that, like Steve's first attempt, I stuck at the bottom. It was one of the coolest things I've ever done on skis. Maybe one of the coolest things ever.
In subsequent trips to Vail I've tried to figure out where those exact cliffs were to get a sense of just what we did. I know the general vicinity, but could not positively ID the precise location. No big deal, the memory is permanently embedded in my brain. To summarize...thanks Mom and Dad!
Back to the present. The father of the little girl in pink told me their kids were home-schooled. What a classroom! Rope drop and away we go!
Here's the video of the first trip down. Blogger won't accept videos over 100mb, so here's the short version. We were non-stopping laps all morning. Not bad for a post-mature adult. The snow didn't ski like 18"--as I said, it wasn't blower pow, but it was still really fun. On the lower angle runs, you floated across the top; on the steeper runs, you dug in.
Me and Ethan at the top of Peak 2. That's Maiden Peak in the background. We're clearly having fun--that's about as much of a smile as I ever muster up. I do appreciate the motivation Ethan provided--as well as the wheels. It's not often I get to test out my passenger skills skiing these days.
We spent the day in the trees. Here's one of the pitches off Bullseye. The snow was 2' in this location.
Cascade awesomeness. This is the trees between Northern Exposure and June's Run.
I took the GoPro the last couple of times. It's kind of fun to see POV through the trees. It makes it look a lot hairier than it is. Or at least, that's what I think. I guess skiing trees the way I do is a bit hairy. For me, it's mostly fun.
Upper Bullseye:
See the cloud snake down in the valley. We get the amazing, rare, bluebird day, but it was cloudy in town for a good part of the day.
Looks like 18"
Awesomeness on Cherokee Ridge:
There's more snow in the lot this year than since the 2011-2012 year. March 1, 2017:
Here's a photo of Diane, sometime in the 2007-08 season before I started the blog. The snow was rather deep that season.
Here's to a great season so far. Hopefully, I'll be able to squeeze in more powder days. I've noticed the number of blog posts has decreased in recent years. That's due to two things: (1) my ski buddy Dylan abandoning me; and (2) the fact that I mostly ski powder days now. I'm at the age where I'm not sure how many more I get, so I need to get them while I can.
8:55 on a Wednesday in the rental shop. The guy at the counter tells me "it's like having your own private mountain" on the weekdays at Willamette. I don't know, I haven't tried it enough.
Rental (and sometimes ticket) counter at Willamette Pass
I've been waiting around for weeks for it to snow. I keep having this thought that I'm doing it all wrong. My friend, and former/current ski buddy, Paul Carter put a note in his family Christmas letter that he got 101 days in last year and was trying to do that again this year. He more or less spends the winter in Steamboat. I spend the winter waiting around for it to snow. Hence, my hunch that I'm doing it all wrong. I have been keeping my schedule clear on Wednesdays in the hope that I might get lucky with the weather.
This day, however, was all right. It's actually been snowing a lot, just not on the days that I can ski. So, when this last weather pattern moved in, I paid close attention. Monday was President's Day and the mountain was open. Monday night it was cold and rained hard in town. That continued through Tuesday. Tuesday night was not as heavy, but when I got up at 6:30 on Wednesday the DOT said 4" overnight and the mountain said 12". I didn't necessarily think they had the 12" overnight, but it was definitely plausible that they had that much since Monday night. Good enough for me.
Two turns was enough to know it would be an epic day. The snow was deep, fluffy and bottomless. Stoke ensued.
On the second run up, I started talking to the guy that hopped on with me. He yanked my chain for a bit, but it didn't take long for me to figure out it was my colleague and former student Ethan Nelson. Great, now I have someone to ski with--not that that would change anything.
The requisite selfie
The trees were exquisite in the way that only happens in the NW. Lots of snow, and lots of fun. In fact, there's more snow in the parking lot than I've seen in five years. That kind of surprised me, since it's been raining on and off.
I got a little behind on the blogging. Work has been kind of busy. At any rate, here's the field report for January 20.
This day is quite historic in the sense of changing Federal government administrations and the inevitable descent into chaos that will follow Trump wherever he goes. Skiing is good medicine to keep the mind off a set of behaviors and policies that I will never support.
I've been working in Bend on their UGB project since August of 2014. We've been working on a consulting team to plan the City's next phase of growth--making Bend even better. We made it through the hard part of the project (the boundary amendment--effectively where Bend will grow for the next 15-20 years) to the harder part: how will the city pay for the infrastructure to support that growth. It's a vexing question that is extraordinarily complicated. That's all I'll say about that.
We had two days of meetings to discuss implementation, and wound up the meetings Friday at 12. I bought a four-pack pass to Bachelor this season in hopes of skiing with my new friends from the City (see May 29 post). It was snowing and I was in Bend, so it seemed like a good idea to go up for the afternoon.
The snow did not subside on the way to the mountain--it never does. Bachelor has a bad reputation for bad weather...so bad, some call it Mt. Badweather. I've had days up where where the wind was intense and the rime would stick to you goggles and you had to clear them every two minutes. Combine that with the fact that Bachelor is a big mountain (3,365 vert and 4,000 skiable acres) with treeline at about 7,000 feet or so (base is 5,700') and you end up with whiteout conditions on the lower lifts that can be very disorienting. What they don't tell you is that easily half of those skiable acres are only accessible from the one summit chair, which is hardly ever open. That said, the summit of Bachelor is spectacular.
None of that was happening today. They had four or so of fresh overnight, none of which was left by the time I got there.
The view from the parking lot.
Even the wet snow didn't dampen my enthusiasm. Like I said, Bachelor is a big mountain with Colorado style vert and miles long runs. That's always fun.
While I was getting ready, I ran into Alex Joyce in the lodge. He is on the Bend consulting team and works for Fregonese Associates out of Portland. We spent the afternoon riding around together, starting over at the Northwest Express.
Bachelor opened a new lift this year called "Cloudchaser." I guess that's part of the benefit of being owned by a major corporation (Powdr Corp). The life opens up terrain on the east side of the mountain that was previously inaccessible. It isn't bad, but one of my critiques of Bachelor is that a lot of runs end in a hole. Skiers left of Cloudchaser required a bit of hiking. No big deal on skis, but snowboarders hate that stuff.
The view from Cloudchaser.
I'll close on this. Not so long ago, in a ski town not so far, far away...
It snowed another 6" overnight. Karl drove today so I got a ride and someone to ski with. It promised to be a pretty decent day.
Jarod (also from EWEB) and Karl get their stoke on!
The new snow covered up most of the crust that was lurking below yesterday. Not all...most. That said, there were a few places that were outstanding. The meadows, Eagle's trees and Cherokee Ridge.
Karl dodging trees on Cherokee Ridge.
I've been noticing a new trend as I get further into the trees in my effort to discover new places. Others have discovered many of those places. Some of them are kind of obvious, but overall it seems like the trend is towards more people wanting more adventure. That would be consistent with the hype you see in the magazines. These days it's all about the backcountry. Or closer to home, the "sidecountry."
Sidecountry is out of bounds areas accessible by lift or by lift with a short hike. Willamette has lots of it. I've discovered a lot of it. I plan to discover more of it.
Today felt a tiny bit like Colorado. All of the inbounds areas were pretty well ravaged by 11am. I started getting nervous when we saw a gang of kids heading down to the meadows. Those areas are VIP and should not be accessible to just anyway. We persevered and just started heading a little further into the woods. That strategy paid off big. Both Cherokee and the Eastern slopes of West Peak were pretty much untouched. We did four or five laps...up the front, down the back, up the back, down the front. I developed a system years ago of swapping fast rides and slow rides. It works pretty well.
In late morning we saw some insane kid drop down the Dragon's Back. I've seen tracks down it, but I've never seen anyone ride it. It's about 60 degrees and a few hundred vert into a dense forest. Serious injury awaits if you were to fall. Not to mention the rocks protruding everywhere. We saw them again on the last ride up.
Dragon's Back I
Dragon's Back II
The kid billy goated over to the right by the rocks and then disappeared. We didn't get to see the whole run, but assume he got down...somehow. I looked for a video on YouTube, but none were posted. The kid had a selfie stick so I know he recorded it. I'll stick it in a future post if I find it.
All together a great powder day skiing with Karl. Good snow, good trees, good company.
We made it to midnight last night. Happy new year and all that.
I woke up at 5:30 to use the restroom and checked the snow report. Five inches and snowing hard. It met the minimum criteria so went back to bend and then got up at 6:45 to get ready. There was some snow on the ground at our house -- a promising start to 2017.
Snow in the foothills over the Dexter Covered Bridge.
The drive was a bit slow - got stuck behind a snowplow before I got to Oakridge and then some slow cars near the top of the pass. Otherwise, the drive was very snowy, but uneventful.
It was snowing hard on the ride up.
Snow stick says 76". That's up from 51" a week ago. Not bad.
I spent a lot of time in the trees today. The frontside was a bit crusty - it must have been warm the past few days. There wasn't quite enough fresh snow to completely cover it, but it was definitely working on it. There was a good 3"-4" of fresh on the car when I threw in the towel around 1:15.
The forecast is calling for more overnight. I'm going up with ski buddy Karl tomorrow.
