Protected: December 12, 2021 – Redtop
December 11, 2021 – Willamette Pass
The weekend was shaping up to be a snowy one, so I made plans to head up to the Pass on Saturday to get some afternoon turns in, with the idea of staying at Dan & John’s cabin and making turns again on Sunday. The forecast was calling for up to a couple of feet of snow by the end of the day Sunday, so I was optimistic when I left home around 9:30 after enjoying a hearty breakfast with the family. After a quick stop in Oakridge to get a snow brush for the truck after leaving mine at home, I pulled into the lot a few minutes before 11:30.
Some of the candidates were training on-the-hill OEC skills with Laurie, and Dan was helping as well. After checking in with him, he indicated that he and Joe would be heading up around 12:00 pm or so, after running back down to the cabin and picking up Joe. Since I was already booted up and ready to go, I decided to head up to check things out. I was a bit let down with the conditions — there was only about 7 inches on the ground, but at least it was snowing. I worked my way up KP and followed a skin track up to the base of Eagle’s.
I started up Eagle’s and it looked like it would go, but the snow wasn’t deep. About half way up, I saw the skier who made the skin track ahead of me as they started down. I gave them a nod as they skied by, and I found out later that it was Quin (after talking with Dan & Joe). I worked my way up to the top of Eagle’s, and checked out the tree farm on my way towards the top. From there, I decided to skin over and check out the Peak 2 conditions. There was about a foot of snow at the snow stake, give or take an inch or two, and I skinned out to see if anything looked doable. After checking out Waldo, I decided it and Northern weren’t worth it, and headed back to the lift shack to change over to board mode.
I decided to drop into Boundary, since the coverage looked so-so, with the plan of heading back towards EPA afterwards and linking up with Dan and Joe. I stepped into my bindings and dropped in, and made less than fun turns down to the top of Escalator before calling it. Reflecting back on it, it was probably one of the worst runs I’ve ever had at the Pass — basically every turn was either hitting rocks, stumps or small bushes. Somewhat dis-satisfied with my turns, I skinned up and headed up kris-kross back towards Peak 2. Once at the bump shack, a quick call to Dan confirmed that they would be up in about a half hour, so I settled in and had a sandwich, and drowned my sorrows with a tasty 10.5% Minutes After Midnight Imperial Stout from Coldfire Brewing.
A few minutes later, I was feeling a bit better about the day by drowning my sorrows, and then Dan and Joe showed up. I was happy to see them, and we drank our beers while they ripped skins.
A few minutes later, we made the short walk up to the top of EPA. After talking it over, we agreed the plan would be to ski KP down, since it looked like it would be the only safe way down. Apparently Eagle’s had lost most of it’s snow up to due to the high winds, and it was down to dirt, so KP would have to do.
We shoved off and started down, and the snow was pretty good, even if it only was 8-10 inches over absolutely no base. We worked our way down the run, and I snapped a few pics of Dan and Joe as they came down.
Partway down the run, and below Eagle’s, we stopped to regroup after Dan went down from hitting something lurking under the meager snowpack. A few moments later, we were back on track and making wiggles down the run. Given the low snow depth and shallow slope angle, wiggles was about all we could muster…
We skied down to the base, and right to the parking lot, which is always a treat. We chatted with Laurie, Rob and Ian, who were just heading out after working with the candidates on OEC skills, and then headed out.
A few miles down the road, I pulled into the cabin behind Dan and Joe, and we settled in for the evening. The first order of business after getting the gear on the drying rack and making a fire was to cut a round off a big log behind the cabin. After that, we enjoyed some brats, as well as another beer. This time, my offering was a tasty Lights Out Stout from Worthy Brewing.
The remainder of the evening was spent enjoying the warmth of the fire, good company, and conversation about how much it might snow and where to ski tomorrow. As I settled into my sleeping bag, I reflected back on the day, and although it definitely wasn’t one that exceeded expectations, any day out touring and skiing isn’t bad. Soon thereafter, I feel asleep, dreaming about deep pow and what the following day might bring.
December 4, 2021 – Refreshing & Cutting
December had arrived in the mountains, and it was time to head to the Pass for the annual candidate/make-up refresher. I met Dan around 7:00 am, and instead of loading snow gear into the truck, we loaded saws instead, hoping for a little time in the afternoon to work on clearing a few saplings on the runs. We made the drive up highway 58 without incident, and soon found ourselves at the Pass ready for the day’s activities.
Since there was some wind forecast for the afternoon, we decided to move up the chairlift evacuation as the first order of business for the day. I ran through the evac plan with the candidates, and then we headed over to Sleepy to to practice. After explaining how to belay, lower, communicate, etc., we got to it. I did manage to snap a few pictures of the veterans who were there for the day as a make-up, including John, Stefan and Chris below…
Next up was a talk about the avalanche gear and the routes we run on the hill, followed by me organizing some of the lift evacuation equipment for deployment on the hill. Then, the rest of the group went on an area tour, while Dan and I had a quick lunch and then started off up the hill with the saws for the afternoon. After clearing our activities with the owner, we headed up to the top of Twilight to check on whether we wanted to start at the bottom of RTS, but ultimately elected to head up top.
The drive up the road, through Tait’s and onto Boundary went smootly, and there was just a little residual snow left in the area. The area was looking really good, although it looked more like early October than December. Nevertheless, we made our way up top, where Tim was doing some work on the EPA top shack.
After giving Tim a hand moving some concrete blocks, we donned chaps and safety gear, and headed over to the top of RTS to continue the work we started a few weeks prior. We cut for a couple of hours, making good progress on the hemlocks and grand firs that were surprisingly much bigger than the past year. Even with all the cutting we’ve done on RTS over the years, it seems like there is always plenty more to do each year.
After a couple of hours we’d had enough fun, and decided it was time to head down and get off the hill before dark and time to get some food. Looking back to the south, I snapped a photo of Dan with Diamond in the background, while he took a picture of me looking west…
We worked our way back up to the top and loaded our gear back in the truck. I pulled out my beer of choice for the day, a really tasty Squeezy Rider IPA from Deschutes Brewery. Instead of drinking it up top, I decided to enjoy it down at Gold Lake with the brats we were planning to grill, so back in my cooler it went.
On the way down, we decided to take a look down Escalator and over to Northern to see if there was any snow at all left on the runs. Escalator was looking pretty poor, but there were actually a few small skiable patches on Northern. As Dan joked, “we should have brought the skis.”
On the way down, we stopped at the big corner and cut a tree down that was right in the middle of the run that we’d identified on the way up. With Dan’s electric chainsaw, it’s super simple to make a quick cut, and then we were on our way.
From KP, we headed down to the base, and then after locking up, headed down to Gold Lake snowpark for some dinner. We had the brats on the grill, and were enjoying our beers, when Bill pulled up from down the road. We had a good chat with him, opined on whether or not we were going to get any snow this season and be able to get open, and talked about the challenges of hiring lift ops this season.
A few minutes later, Bill and his wife headed down the road, and our brats were done. We scarfed them down, finished off the rest of our beers, and headed down the road ourselves. As we turned out onto the highway, both Dan and I agreed we were probably done cutting for the year. The only question remaining was, how much would it snow and would we be able to capitalize on any of our efforts this winter? Only time will tell….
December 1, 2021 – Mt Bachelor
Since it looked like winter was going to be making a fashionably late arrival this year, Dan and I made plans to get our December turns in early and steal a summer day out of season. After waffling back and forth between Mt Hood and Mt Bachelor, we settled on Bachelor. We early at Dan’s, piled gear into my Subaru, and headed up the highway. Although it was a bit sad there wasn’t any snow as we passed Willamette, it was nice to be able to take the Cascade Lakes Highway and the Sunriver cutoff to knock a few miles off the drive. Soon, we found ourselves getting a good look at the mountain, and there wasn’t much snow for December, but it looked like we’d be able to find some turns.
We found a parking spot along the highway, changed into ski boots, shouldered packs, and headed out. Happily, we were able to skin from a few feet of the base on 2-3 inches of snow, and we worked our way up Avalanche run towards mid-mountain. It really was quite a sight seeing the mountain with so little snow, and it felt like June, although the snowpack was thinner.
It didn’t take long to reach the bottom of the summit lift, and we had to take the skis off to cross a few bare spots before resuming skinning. We decided to head up the cat road to the east for a little while, rather than skin up under the lift due to the lack of snow. Before long, we were able to work our way up one of the gullies and then up to a main ridge that afforded us access towards the top.
As we skinned the last bit towards the top of the Summit lift, the wind picked up appreciably, so we found a spot out of it near the ski patrol area and enjoyed some food with a view in the sun. We weren’t sure whether to try Cow’s Face or the Cirque Bowl, but after I took a quick jaunt over to Cow’s to check it out we decided it looked to be our best bet, being out of the wind.
After refueling with a quick bite, we headed over to Cow’s with our gear and enjoyed the view out of the wind. It was also time to get our beers on ice, before enjoying them a few minutes later prior to dropping in. My beer of choice was a tasty Dark Matter chocolate porter from Block 15 Brewing Company.
After soaking up the views and about half of our beers, it was time to drop in for some December corn. I headed down first, and made some really fun turns down to a suitable spot to shoot a few shots of Dan coming down.
Although there was the least amount of snow on Cow’s that we’d ever made turns on, the quality was pretty nice. We threaded our way through a thin section, slipped between a choke point with a couple of rocks, and then continued on down.
After working our way through the choke point, Dan grabbed the camera and skied down a ways, then motioned me to come down. I opened it up a bit in the perfect corn, and carved some fun turns down to Dan and then on past…
We skied down a ways further, and I shot a few more pics of Dan. About 800 feet or so from the top, we decided to call it. It looked like we could have skied down a few hundred feet further, but it involved a couple of carries and we wanted to get back up top before the sun set completely on the north side in order to harvest the waiting corn.
The boot back up the slope was enjoyable in the afternoon sun. In many ways, it felt like we were climbing in June or July, while the snowpack suggested we might be climbing in early October. We admired our turns as we climbed back up, and soon found ourselves back up top at our waiting beers.
We sat around up top for a few minutes enjoying the second half of our beers, but we didn’t wait too long because the sun crept behind the mountain and our line down was now in the shade. Not to worry, we shoved off in time to harvest some really nice corn before it refroze for the afternoon.
We retraced our skin track back down, and found the snow to be in really good condition. The corn was nearly perfect, and both of us were pretty happy as we ripped big turns down the slope.
We worked our way down the slope, and eventually found one of the gullies that held snow to work a continuous line down towards the cat road below. Along the way, we took turns shooting each other with the camera, firing off several shots, including the one below.
We were able to thread a continuous line all the way back down to the cat road, and then with a really short carry, we worked our way back down to mid-mountain and the bottom of the summit lift.
At mid-mountain, we paused for a moment to enjoy the view out to the sisters and Broken Top. The lack of snow on these peaks for the 1st of December was stunning, but with a little luck, they’ll be coated in feet of snow before too long and hopefully several more all winter long in La ‘Nina can deliver.
After a short carry across the snowless section at mid-mountain, we strapped back in headed on down. Dan had sniffed out a line earlier that looked like it would ski through the trees better than what we’d skinned up. We decided to hit it on the way down, and it turned out to be a great decision; the snow was really nice and we didn’t hit a rock!
We ended up having to cross back over to Avalanche on foot near the bottom, but soon were turning again, albeit slowly, back towards the bottom. The skiing in this section was marginal at best, but at least we were sliding. In the end, we were able to slide to within a few vertical feet of the parking lot on only a couple inches of snow. Maybe not the brightest idea in the world, but as I told Dan, given the snow conditions, sliding the entire vertical from the summit to the parking lot on this day may have been one of our best works of art yet.
From the base, we made the short hike back to the car, loaded our gear, and headed down to Edison Butte Snowpark to enjoy some apres’ activities, including cooking up some tasty brats. The weather in the parking lot was perfect, and as an added bonus, we could see the top part of the mountain where we’d made turns an hour or so earlier. While the brats were cooking, we enjoyed a beer, and my second choice for the day was a Backside IPA from Oblivion Brewing Company that really hit the spot. I’d bought it a few months earlier in the summer while vacationing in Sunriver with the family, and it seemed fitting to drink it near it’s point of origin.
It didn’t take long, and the brats were ready to go. All that was needed was a few onions and some mustard, along with a piece of bread. As usual, they hit the spot after a day of climbing and riding and we wolfed them down. All that was left to do after that was to hit the road.
All things considered, even though we’d have rather been sitting in the snowpark shivering after skiing a foot of pow on a good base, it did feel nice to “steal” a day of summer turns on the 1st of December. Nevertheless, it’s now beyond time for winter to arrive, and I hope it does so in a hurry. Until then, here’s a parting shot from the day.
