Woke up to yet another cloudy and rainy day here in Western Oregon. Even the locals have been saying there hasn’t been much else besides rain this season. We were headed to Mt Hood Ski Bowl. Their snow coverage, so far this year is very lacking. But like they say a bad day skiing is better than working any day. So, we skied the few runs they had open on the slushy snow that another skier referred to as powder. Clearly, there is a different definition of powder in the Pacific Northwest. Snow is supposed to be headed this way, we sure hope so.
At least in the afternoon, the rain let up and we got to dry off a bit. Came back to the condo and got in the wonderful hot tub. Such a nice way to end the day.
Got some fresh snow over the next couple of days and decided we’d give Ski Bown another chance. In looking into it, we found that they were only open for night skiing during the week. As they bill themselves as having the largest night skiing in America, we decided we could “do it under the lights”. And I will say it was a much more pleasant experience than my last night skiing experience many,many years ago. Probably because it was much warmer and it was a little strange to start our skiing day at 3pm. A fraction of those 35 night skiing runs were open because the snow conditions still were not great. But we still managed to have a good time.
We then decided to check out the Timberline Ski Area. This area is located on Mt Hood on part of the Palmer glacier. The snow pack was much better, however, the rains have also effected the snow base and snow quality. The most dangerous part of our day was crossing the parking lot to the lodge. It was an ice rink, but put on my trusty ice cleats and didn’t feel that I would die with every step taken.
The Timberline Lodge is a historic landmark built in 1937. The lodge and the ski resort have been run by the same family since 1955. This is also the summer training location of the Olympic ski team. The team no longer has to travel to Chile or New Zealand for their training. Timberline is the only place in the US that offers chairlift accessible skiing 12 months out of the year. We were able to ski on part of the glacier, which is accessible from the Magnificent Mile chairlift. I can see why the ski team would like to train here as glacier skiing is icy. Access to the upper portion of the mountain is accessible via the Palmer chair which only runs in the spring and summer.
The next day we headed back to Timberline as snow was forecast. Of course back down at the condo it was another cloudy and rainy day. The forecast did not disappoint and we had finally found some snow. The snow was pretty wet and we had to keep going into dry off. Favorite run of the day was Kruiser.
For our final day at Timberline, we woke up to our 6th straight day of rain. But it was supposed to be snowing up at Timberline. So, skiing we went. This happened to be the wettest show I have ever encountered. A rain/snow mix was coming down and after three runs I looked and felt like I had gone for a swim. We had also encountered “Cascade Concrete”. I couldn’t get the skis to cut through the snow at all. So, with that and the wind picking up enough to shut down a couple of the chair lifts we decided to call it a day. Ranks up their with one of my top worst days of skiing, although, the locals just put rain ponchos over their ski clothes and went right on skiing.
The bad weather did give us a chance to check out the historic lodge and try the world famous hot chocolate. So, glad we did. The lodge is really interesting terms of architecture and the building process. You may recognize the lodge from the movie “The Shining”. The aerial shots used at the start of the movie are of Timberline and some of the exterior shots are as well. The lodge was built as a project of the WPA. There is an interesting video of the construction process and the materials used. Since, the nation was in the midst of the Great Depression, they used local materials and repurposed other items. Many were happy to have the work and made 90 cents a day. A ranger also gives guided tours of the lodge, unfortunately, none were scheduled for the day we were there.
The hot chocolate was excellent especially topped with whipped cream, chocolate and Carmel sauce, and toffee pieces.
The following morning we were off to Portland.