The New and improved Oregon 2020/2021 Ski Season Thread

[river59]

Speaking of perfection...

It can be found here and there

[mr. hankey]

Awesome pic River59
how many miles out from the TH is the road now?

Might be doing a volcano tour up through OR, WA, in a couple of weeks (mid may).
What do folks think will be in good shape/access around then (baring any huge dumps)? Sisters/Hood/Adams/Helens, etc...?

Attachment 373032

Our neglected neighbor to the north is skiing quite well. Snowpack isn't nearly as dirty or sun cupped as what I have seen on hood recently.

[river59]

Something like 4 miles to cold springs. The road winds through a burn, so when it goes it will go quickly. Mid may will have you parking at or near the s climb trailhead. North side access tends to take a bit longer to open up but I know a way or two that might help you get nearer to killen that time of year.

Mid may is prime volcano skiing season round here. I would expect nearly everything above 5-6k on Adams to still be in fine shape. SW chutes, mazama, NFNWR, s face, real wild shit on the E and NE sides if you are feeling lucky...

IMO the snow on hood is particularly dirty and gritty in a bunch of spots that I have visited recently. I suspect that sun cupping might become a problem earlier than normal this year. Coverage is still excellent and plenty of fine skiing could likely be found during your timeframe. Wyeast, Cooper, white river, snow dome, s side vicinity...

The possibilities are endless.

Can't help with bend area or st helens info.

[Tap]

[thefortrees]

Damn it’s looking in fine shape

[CnRzG]

Damn it’s looking in fine shape

Bailey!!!!!!

[Norseman]

the picturesque Wy'East







steep rad tracks on Middle Sister





hasslin' in the lower Deschutes

[Norseman]

Couple more from the phone.

HuDge thanks to Teh Poacher for the help with tickets.

[jonesy]

Swell day for riding.

Fair amount of leverage to get a bite till 1030.

Trees were suncupped but skiable.

Cheers

[jonesy]

Couple more from the phone.

HuDge thanks to Teh Poacher for the help with tickets.

You guys were on Marshmallow today? Yellow jacket and the lil ripper.

[Norseman]

You guys were on Marshmallow today? Yellow jacket and the lil ripper.

No, this past Friday.

[Verde]

Fresh snow in May is hard to beat

[mr. hankey]

Something like 4 miles to cold springs. The road winds through a burn, so when it goes it will go quickly. Mid may will have you parking at or near the s climb trailhead. North side access tends to take a bit longer to open up but I know a way or two that might help you get nearer to killen that time of year.

Mid may is prime volcano skiing season round here. I would expect nearly everything above 5-6k on Adams to still be in fine shape. SW chutes, mazama, NFNWR, s face, real wild shit on the E and NE sides if you are feeling lucky...

IMO the snow on hood is particularly dirty and gritty in a bunch of spots that I have visited recently. I suspect that sun cupping might become a problem earlier than normal this year. Coverage is still excellent and plenty of fine skiing could likely be found during your timeframe. Wyeast, Cooper, white river, snow dome, s side vicinity...

The possibilities are endless.

Can't help with bend area or st helens info.

Thank you !
Also, fantastic pics norseman

[snojones]

the picturesque Wy'East




hasslin' in the lower Deschutes

Is that a Raven attacking a Golden Eagle? Very cool photo!

[whatsupdoc]

Some belated Oregon stoke.

At the end of April I had some time off to ski. The original plan was to stay here in CA, but the meager snowpack had us looking elsewhere. A last minute decision had us driving north to OR for a couple of days.

Day 1 we started off on Mt. McLoughlin. We were able to skin fairly quickly, but the lower forest was intermittently melted out, and we knew we'd have to find the trail on the way out, lest we wallow through the forest at the end of the day.

Skinning through the forest:





After a while we hit the SE ridge and made our way to the top, enjoying outstanding views along the way.





After hitting the summit we decided to ski the E bowl, which didn't have any tracks yet. Conditions were nice shallow pow. It was slightly sun affected down low but overall it skied very well.

[whatsupdoc]

After skiing McLoughlin we drove north to Mt. Hood. The plan was to ski the Wy'East face. We had considered summiting from that side of the mountain, but after arriving the upper ridge looked pretty wind scoured and skiing from the summit looked quite sketchy at best, so we resolved just to ski the Wy'East face from the ridge.

The forecast was for sunny skies, so we started early to catch the E facing line in good conditions. Upon starting we noticed some clouds, which did make for a nice sunrise.




The clouds quickly built and the winds picked up substantially, and it immediately became clear that we were going to be way too early, and it was unclear if the snow would soften at all with the heavy cloud cover. We took a couple of long breaks and killed about 90 minutes, shivering a bit in the high winds while wearing all of our clothing. At this point, I was quite skeptical we would ski the line in good conditions, if we even skied it at all. We had a conversation with another party that decided to bail. Bailing sounded appealing, but I reminded myself of my adage of not bailing until I was really forced to do so. WIth that in mind, we headed up at a slow pace. The clouds stuck around, but as the day warmed up the snow surface started to soften just slightly from ambient temps, so we kept on going.



We eventually transitioned to booting. While booting the clouds started to break up just a bit and it got warmer. By the time we hit the summit ridge the winds were calm and the cloud cover was diminishing.




We waited another 45 minutes or so and dropped in around noon. Conditions on the way down were surprisingly awesome. The first handful of turns were a bit variable, but the snow quickly transitioned to nearly perfect corn after about a dozen turns. We enjoyed thousands of feet of great corn all the way back to the car. It was bluebird by the time we got back to the parking lot. We enjoyed a beer, very glad we hadn't bailed.







As much as we wanted to continue our tour of the Pacific NW, the forecast had turned for the worse since leaving CA. The weather was looking like clouds and light showers for the foreseeable future, not exactly the best weather for skiing big mountains. With that in mind, we made the decision to drive back to CA for a multi-day tour though the Sierra. Check out the Eastern Sierra 20-21 thread if you're interested.

It was a great 2 days in OR. We skied excellent snow on amazing peaks both days. I'm looking forward to coming back and skiing more volcanoes in spring.

[::: :::]

Nice! Thanks for sharing!

[river59]

Nice action shots! Way to rock the tele tech setup.

[mr. hankey]

Good stuff again doc!

[jonesy]

[thefortrees]

Solid! Always corns up later than you think on that mountain...

[SchralphMacchio]

Mike I demand a text next time you’re in town!!! I assume you still have some Sisters, Scott, Thielsen, Garfield to tick off? Maybe bring up that next set of your “dated” touring skis you wanna unload too, I’ll happily buy em from yah

Not that I could have joined anyways, I’m in shit shape and oh yeah my son was just born on Friday 5/7 so a touring embargo was in place.

Awesome trip as always!

[::: :::]

congrats schralph!

[SirVicSmasher]

Mike I demand a text next time you’re in town!!! I assume you still have some Sisters, Scott, Thielsen, Garfield to tick off? Maybe bring up that next set of your “dated” touring skis you wanna unload too, I’ll happily buy em from yah

Not that I could have joined anyways, I’m in shit shape and oh yeah my son was just born on Friday 5/7 so a touring embargo was in place.

Awesome trip as always!

Congrats. Your son is in good company with the rest of us Tauruses

Sent from my SM-G981U using Tapatalk

[whatsupdoc]

Mike I demand a text next time you’re in town!!! I assume you still have some Sisters, Scott, Thielsen, Garfield to tick off? Maybe bring up that next set of your “dated” touring skis you wanna unload too, I’ll happily buy em from yah

Not that I could have joined anyways, I’m in shit shape and oh yeah my son was just born on Friday 5/7 so a touring embargo was in place.

Awesome trip as always!

Sounds good Alex. S Sister looks like a nice corn run, I've got my eye on that one. Congrats on the new addition to the family!