1/8/02
Made the drive down to Bend Monday evening. Plan was to do Tumalo Butte the next day. We've been in winter misery for too long, with the last storm supplying moisture in the wet form all the way up to 8000 feet. So the powder jones was working pretty hard.
The overnight forecast was for lowering snow levels and 3-4 inches of new. With great optimism we were convinced that would work out to be 6+ up higher. Meanwhile we hit the Bend Brewery for some greeezy chow and a few beers. The unfortunate logic being that since 2 beers was great - more was better . . .
Jon started tapping on my skull and playing abusively loud music at 8am. I was able to get myself motivated to go quickly thereafter . . . . . . at noon.
| Too many portions |
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Started getting into some new snow on the drive up only after reaching 5K or so. Looked like the day was going to be a little more scruffy than we had thought.
Started skinning up - Jon leading, me dragging behind. There was probably 3-4 inches of new on the ground, with more higher up. Combination of late start and the snow falling right at freezing made the snow a full-on creamed corn consistency. The most interesting effect of all the rain the previous few days was not the rock-hard base underneath the new stuff, but all of the snow and ice chunks hiding under the fresh from where the trees had shed their winter loads - loads that had been accumulating for weeks.
| Skin track |
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My motor had a single speed on the way up . . . plodding. The huffing and puffing usually will cast away the effects of a night before. Not this time. We continued up through brief breaks of sunshine and mostly clouds parked on us. Visibility was not too great. After managing the mandatory summit bushwhack, we were on top.
| Jon being repelled by the frozen vegetables |
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| Oh the indignity of the ski-carry! |
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Angled over to have a look into the bowl. It was pretty much socked in with all of the clouds blowing over the summit. Started playing a bit of the kicking off cornices game to stress the snow in the bowl a bit and because it's stupid fun. I almost tumbled. Jon almost tumbled. End of the cornice game.
| Summit hoodoos |
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A small slide had run earlier in the day where a cornice had dropped, more cornice debris than avalanche. We couldn't see the rest of bowl to see if any other activity had been going on. This, along with the poor visibility and the horror of having to skin back up and out with a swollen brain - no skiing the bowl today.
| Skinning across the top with the clouds streaming across |
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| "warchout!! WARCHOUT!!" |
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The tree skiing back down to the lot was great at times, crisis management at others. The terrain is outstanding and the trees and glades are spaced nearly perfectly most of the way down. The paste that we were skiing with the ice cubes underneath just made the turns a little frightening at times - especially when the trees got tight.
| A look at one of the tasty glades on the way down. Where the trees opened up there was up to a foot of fresh to be had |
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Tumalo's only a bit more than 20min from Jon's place. A pretty nice playground in the back yard!