Whereby M. G. Halle Lays it All Out…Silky Style
For one day this season we were ok with El Niño. Superbowl Sunday. Chris and I had a surprisingly good day skiing der Hood. We ditched the car in Govy, stuck out our thumbs and the first car up Timberline Rd. obliged. The clouds lifted and the snow up high was as good as Hood snow gets.
Claudia and I experienced a banner day picking today. Chanterelles are more pleasant and are easier to clean when dry!
The tour to Ramona falls is one of my favorite things. Yesterday Steven, Ralph and I skied the route with a snowcat assist part way up the Palmer. It was a great day spent with friends on the mountain. We encountered a handfull of giants along the way.
Spent a nice day with the family at Timberline yesterday and couldn’t resist this picture of my daughter and Smokey the Bear.
Today’s was an exploratory tour I’ve wanted to ski for a while. After a long approach Lynn, Blake and I found great corn snow to the southeast of Lookout Mountain near Mt. Hood. We could have chosen a better line to ski and were forced to traverse through thick trees and over lots of bits and boughs more than we would have liked. The views and uncanny feeling like we were on a Sierra Nevada spring trip made up for the descent. The views of Hood, Adams, Rainier, Helens, Jefferson, Washintgon and the Sisters were clear and a cold foggy blanket extended to the horizon east of the Cascades.
One of my favorite things about Mt. Hood Ski Bowl besides the lack of lines at the upper bowl chair, the WPA era warming hut and the overall friendly vibe is the proximity of Mirror Lake. Enough said.
We spent a scorcher of a Saturday-our thermometer topped out at 104.2ºF-mostly on the porch. Around 1pm we couldn’t help but notice the spectacular Gnarl Ridge Wildland Fire plume:
The politics of wildland firefighting is a fascinating subject. Lots and lots and lots of taxpayer dough spent year after year after year…
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.
