Halle’s Smooooth Words o’ Wisdom

AC and I did a half day tour near Mirror Lake Wednesday. Winter’s going down swinging this year.

The end of winter means anything but ski doldrums in the Pacific Northwest. It means the start of something altogether new: volcano corn season.  

Yesterday Blake, Eric and I managed a 1/2 day tour on Mt. Hood. Trail breaking was mostly thigh and sometimes waist deep. Trench Warfare. Not the Cascade cement variety. The light, fairly fluffy and all too uncommon variety in these parts. It’s a mindboggling winter in the Pacific Northwest. A hasty pit on a forested north northwest aspect revealed a meter of new snow atop a well formed crust from the clear and frigid weather last week. 

Hey now!

We just purchased a used vehicle in Missoula, Montana. Incredibly, I was able to drive the new rig home on 1 tank of fuel. That’s right: 1 tank of fuel. Fumes powered me the last 30 miles I’m sure but I still made it. Can you guess the type of rig? Hint: it’s not an overpriced stop-gap hybrid. Another hint: don’t buy them in Portland or Seattle as you’ll pay a 2-3k premium. It’s cheaper to fly to most places in the west and drive them home yourself. First correct guess gets a free 8.5 x 11 print of your choice.   

 The last day of 2007 was a remarkable one for skiing on Mt. Hood. Sub-twenty degree temperatures lingered all day, the sky was clear and the snow light and plentiful.

We don’t typically see hoarfrost around here.

Nonetheless the sky is puking snow and the skiing is fantastic.

City of Angels style road rage carnage comes to Oregon. Are we surprised? Not really. Saddened? Most definitely.  

Today was my first tour this season. It was also a reminder that there are some large trees left in Oregon. It was a surprisingly good day. Blake and I met at the church at six. I forgot my poles in the bed of my pickup though lucked out with a slopeside rental shop open at 7:30am and a cool Meadows employee who hooked me up with light rentals. Managed to graze only two rocks and bounce off several buried tree parts without core damage. Whew.  To cap off this surprisingly good day my forgotten poles were untouched.

The snow is piling up. Let’s hope it stays awhile and we avoid catastrophic melts.

Claudia and I visited a favorite spot recently and came away with many mushrooms!

We saw a fair number of moldy ones:

I first heard and learned this phrase upon hearing a song with the same name by the Louvin Brothers.

I ran across a scene the other night downtown which brought the phrase to mind only with a slight twist: Old Hickory on the Epoxy: