The sun was shining and it was a great day of riding at Timberline. Snow conditions started off rock hard but corned up nicely by about 11:00. We spent most of the day riding in and out of bounds off the Palmer lift. There is still plenty of snow coverage. We rode the upper Zigzag Snowfield for most of the morning, but stayed out of the lower canyon even though it looked real tempting, since we weren’t fully prepared for avy conditions (no avy gear). The canyon will be in good shape for the next several weeks to ski, so it may be worth heading back out there on skins. On a separate note, I’ve never seen so many people attempting the summit on Hood as on Saturday. The line of people on the Hogsback and above the Bergschrund was constant all day.
September the 4th turned out to be a beautiful day get turn in. I met Todd in the Timberline parking lot and we left around 7:15am. We hiked up the road along the magic mile canyon to the base of the Palmer in t-shirts and shorts. There didn’t seem to be many people riding the lift, but we did get a few puzzled looks as we hiked/skinned up the east side of the Palmer.
Silcox Hut, September 2006
We hiked along the dirt road up to the Silcox hut, then hiked and skinned on the snow above the Magic Mile. The views were excellent as we continued past a few of the monster jumps on the east side of the lower Palmer snowfield.
Hiking past a large summer kicker
Once we reached the top of the Palmer snowfield, weheaded over to the White River canyon and continued up the snowfield to around 9300′ where the continuous snow ended. There were some great crevasses to skier’s left on the White River glacier. The snow patches above towards Crater Rock and the summit were hideously cupped and not worth further hiking.
White River Glacier, September 2006
The ride down was great, with spectacular views into the White River Canyon and beyond (though it was a bit smokey). The snow was excellent corn and very mildly cupped. We rode down the WR snowfield, and then with a small traverse, connected with the Palmer groomers all the way down the magic mile canyon to 6300′. The return on investment was about 91% (3000’/3300′), and we were back in the parking lot by 12:30. Not bad for September. The day played out with some good beer at the Ratskellar in Govy, followed by the 3 hour drive back to the southern Willamette Valley.
