Willamette Pass
What to do when the country is in a national emergency and it snows 12"? Go skiing! There's no better means of social distancing. We had four weeks of spring in February. Flowers are blooming, trees budding, I had to mow the lawn, and my allergies are kicking in. I was pretty much ready to give up on any more powder days.
Besides, anyone with half a brain has been watching the unfolding global disaster and our inept President's response to it (note that this is the G-rated version). The administration finally did something about it last week and declared a national emergency yesterday. Gee, why didn't they think of that six weeks ago when the first case was recorded in Washington? Maybe because they disbanded the pandemic position on the National Security Council.
The whole thing will probably get pretty ugly, and has a chance of being catastrophic. Even today there are reports of people hitting the bars to party. American exceptional alright...exceptionally dumb.
The upshot is the snow was an excellent way to distract myself for a day and practice social distancing. There were maybe 25 cars in the lot when I arrived at 8:30. There probably weren't more than 300 people total at the mountain. A huge crowd relative to the reported 8 on Thursday. Willy delivers when it wants to - great snow, great mountain, small crowds. Gotta love it.
Snowing hard when I arrived.
I think this was the third ride up the chair.
Nobody on the hill.
A few remnant skier tracks.
Wait, there's someone. There was 12" at the base and probably close to 15" or more in some places.
Backside chair.
Wait a second, who's that hucking the cliff?
The snow was 12+" on top of hard pack or ice. Skiing the 45 degree Northern Exposure trees was an adventure in avoiding sluff--the mini avalanches I was setting off on every turn. Keeps things interesting.
Social distancing in the trees on Cherokee Ridge.
The sun peeking through a bit on Cherokee.
The Camp Robbers didn't seem to get the memo that there was a global pandemic. They were aggressively panhandling. Kind of like hanging out in downtown Eugene.
What a great skiing day. No crowd, no risk, full on pow. Catherine texted later that Vail resorts was closing as of Sunday. No doubt Willy will continue to operate. There's not enough people up there to create much risk - at least no more so that, say going to the grocery store which I'm going to get to do tomorrow.
Stay safe and healthy out there everyone. And vote for someone who is not Orange nor insane in November.
