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.  

Ralph, Pat and I did a familiar tour on Mt. Hood a little differently this weekend. A while back Ralph suggested that instead of doing the tour in typical car-to-car fashion we should leave a car at the Paradise trail head, walk the mile or so to highway 26 and then thumb it to Timberline along with our cousins the snowboarding rabble. Ralph uses this transportation technique paddling on the Clack all the time. Capital idea. Count me a new fan and advocate of the car-walk-thumb-skin-ski-car style of ski touring. The thumb part worked out smoothly to our surprise and glee. We thought we might have trouble being 3 unshaven, ripe rogues all with skis, boots and packs. The mountain folk smiled upon us and we were up at the great Lodge in nearly the same time it would have taken in a second car.

Finally made the trip to Whistler Blackcomb! 

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!

 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.

Scott Rice and I were treated to a buncha new snow at the Bowl this afternoon. There was plenty of untracked in the upper bowl.

The man says… 

I think I see a big ‘ol grin there somewhere…

Happy holidays.  

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.

With the close of each ski season I wax but don’t scrape my skis. Scraping can wait until Autumn.