Is there such a thing as too much snow?

Willamette Pass Resort
Sunday, February 24th, 2019

The answer is, of course, no.  But I think there's ways to approach too much.

Just another powder day at the pass.  It didn't start snowing until last night, so I was excused from coming up.  Good thing too because we were doing a Strategic Doing training in Newberg. The training went well and our nefarious plan to change Oregon through the mantra of stop talking and start doing might be taking hold.  We'll see.  We'll also be doing more trainings.

Last post I spoke a little about this crazy life.  Here's a few random anecdotes in random order to underscore the point...

• Moved to Fort Collins from Rockford, IL in 1966.  A few years back I read an article on happiness rankings of cities...FoCo was first and Rockford was last.  Coincidence? I think not.  Thanks mom and dad for not making us grow up in Rockford.
• Played guitar in front of 2,500 people... this was for a student rally at CSU.  Garth knew the student body president and students (including me) protesting tuition increases (sound familiar?).  There was a march and a huge crowd of people came up on the plaza while we played "Under My Thumb."  We called ourselves Final Notice for that one.  As a bonus we got on the evening news in Denver.  Played a lot of gigs before and since, but never to more than a few hundred people.
• Played Wipeout with the drummer from the Ventures.  Nothing more to say.
• Went to DC and testified to Congressional staffers on campus emergency management.
• Got photos of Robert Redford at a democractic campaign party around the corner from the Sequoia Street house.  I wonder if I'll ever find those pictures...it's a wonder I didn't become the papparazzi.
• Share a name with a famous Author (the Dean of American Crime Fiction), the Wine Advocate, and the former general manager of Vail.  The last one is my favorite (well, duh); the Executive Director of the Oregon Wine Board introduced me at the most recent Oregon Wine Symposium...I don't think the audience bought it.  The downside is that at one point there were four Robert Parker's in Eugene alone.
• Got invited to testify to the state legislature in March on my work around innovation districts.  Should be a gas.

There's obviously more, and maybe I'll share some later.

The snowpack is healthy.



















Same scene as Wednesday.










































Nick was up today.  Nick went through the program some time back and worked with us for a while.  He now has a great job running the MPO in Corvallis.























Waiting...

More waiting.  We were in line at 8:40--second chair.  As is to be expected at Willamette, they didn't quite get going at 9.  It was 9:20 by the time they dropped the rope.



















The first run was a little surprising - the snow was pretty wind blown on the front side and way heavier than Wednesday.  Not that I was complaining, but it took a bit of getting used to. 

















Nick and I headed into the Eagle's trees.

You know it's deep when the snow machines get stuck.  They'll need to run the cat up there to get that one out.
 

SDN was the bomb today.  Best snow on the mountain.  I took several runs under the cliff.  It's kind of fun - you billy goat down a 60 degree chute off to the right for about 20 feet, and then drop straight in to a left footer and the a right footer just above where I'm standing.  The angle is easily 45 degrees which makes it all the more fun.

II.























Parker World HQ, Eugene, Oregon
Monday, February 25, 2019

Snow day!  Incredibly, it snowed 11" overnight in Eugene.  Everything is shut down, lots of people lost power, and you can hear trees cracking all over the place.

 Our poor trees.  First order of business is to shake them off.

 Some brave fool drove down our street.  Good luck getting back up before the snowplow arrives.

Well, it was all fun and games until the snow plow came by and buried my car.  It took more than an hour to dig it out.  We also had a lot of tree damage on one of our Japanese Maples out front.  Those trees are a key part of our home's charm.  Hopefully it will grow back in.  We lost a bunch of branches in the big ice storm about five years ago.  At least we're not trapped on a train in Oakridge.

The total in our yard was 13" which ties the great March dump of 2013. Weather report calls for cold weather the rest of the week.  I'll be able to get around and have meetings in Newberg on Wednesday.  It's kind of amazing how narrow this storm was - it didn't reach all the way to Albany and stopped south around Roseburg.  High adventure for Eugene where everything closes down if it snows an inch.