My Own Private Mountain

Wednesday, February 22, 2017
Willamette Pass

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. 

8.5' of snow
























Tree skiing, Oregon style.

 I.
 
















II.  There's a better version on my Facebook feed.

Northern Exposure was great today.  There's nothing like floating down a 45 degree slope in 15" of snow--at least if you know how to do it.

Good Time Charlie trees are a little bit tamer slopewise, but the trees are denser. There's a better version on my Facebook feed.

 

Going back to the question of the season, "why do I ski?" Today is why I ski.  Is it important? It is to me--it's great therapy.

I'm hoping I'll get another day or two of this before the season ends. 

Epic!

Combining Work and Play

Friday, January 20.
Inauguration Day.

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.

The historic Tower Theater in downtown Bend.























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...


Mt. Bachelor Strikes Back from remer on Vimeo.

The mountain is understand staffed and the lifts are on wind hold and won't spin today.  Says it all.

Now I get to wait around for it to snow at The Pass again.