Spent friday, saturday, and sunday riding pow on mt bachelor. Most of it was storm riding, but there were some decent moments on sunday where the sun poked out. That being said I love storm riding and found it especially enjoyable to ski fresh tracks and then ride the chair up watching the snow fill in my tracks. Friday was definitely the coldest, lightest snow of the weekend. It was also very deep, and the bottom was rare to find. It puked all day long.
heres a taste..
and here is my car. I left it at a friends in bend all day while skiing and this is what it looked like at 4 when I returned. It had no snow on it when I left to ski that day.
Then on saturday the temps rose about 5-10 degrees to around 28 fahrenheit and the snow got a bit heavier, but there was a lot of it.
saw this in the morning..
Up on the mountain the wind picked up a little too. The combination created a firmer snow pack that was easier to stay on top. It was more typical bachy conditions rather than the rare colorado blower conditions that were on friday. However it was even deeper with the bottom no where in sight, and it was just as fun. The lines were a bit hectic on outback but things worked out.
Heres a stormy shot
Then on sunday I adventured to the side country of mt. bachelor and scored. My buddy and I recently got new A/T setups and wanted to give em a taste, and the snow too. We figured we hit cows face, since summit wasn’t open. Great call by us. We took skyliner up and skied to the top of sunrise. Then we climbed up almost to the top sort of right at the snow turned to really scorn and wind packed.
The climb wasn’t bad even without a track because the wind packed it down so much. Zero cracking in the snow and a real stable feel keep us feeling safe. I dug a mini column just to see if anything was dangerous, but since that area was been skied lots already this season and the latest of the recent snow was wetter and windier, our snow pack was safe. It wasn’t too windy and the visibility varied from what you see above to a few breaks in the sky.
It only took us about a half hour, maybe 45 minutes for us to get where we wanted, and then we were set. We lined with some trackless pitches and I let my buddy take the first turns, just to stay safe. He ripped down about 200 feet and stopped, then I got my fix. We both hooted and concluded that it was stable and we both shredded together.
Heres my buddy right after a long treeless powdery top slope ready to slay more.
Then we skied this..
Ahh it was fun. Once we hit the normal cat track for summit users to use to access rainbow again we decided with haste to continue out of bounds into fresh powder. This was a mistake. If you did what I did and got to the track, follow the track to a point where you can then descend a lift. Getting greedy and trying to get more only leads you to a really flat long walk back in the powder, mostly ending after the lifts close. Thats what we did, it sucked, but now we know. I think if we would have just followed the cat track we would have been able to get three laps in, instead we did one. Anyway now you know. So be careful, that is a valuable tip.
here are more photos..
pow line
The affects of winter
our walk home..
thanks enjoy, be safe, and have fun