Hooray for Snow

President's Day weekend always falls right around Damon's birthday so we usually plan a getaway. This year I thought it would be fun to go skiing. Damon and I have been together for 13 years and we've never skied together. We have family who lives in central Oregon near Mount Bachelor, part of a volcanic chain on the south east side of the Cascade mountain range, and arguably some of the best skiing on the west coast. I have been fortunate enough to ski Whistler, British Columbia in the Canadian Rockies and Lake Tahoe in California's own Sierra Nevada range (as well as local mountain resorts) and Bachelor is a worthy rival. I am merely a novice on two little sticks but I like to have fun and have new experiences. I really want to try snow boarding but I'm glad I was talked out of it this trip because I would have spent the day by myself on the bunny hill. As it were, me, Damon and his sister's family were all happy on the blue runs and could all carve up the mountain together.

Only a 25 minute drive from town, Bachelor boasts a 9000 + feet summit. My sister-in-law said the Bend area has had the mildest of the five winters they've lived there but had been graced by storms up from the south for the week prior to our visit. When we arrived on Saturday morning, St. Valentine's Day, it was cold, gray and snowing. It continued to snow intermittently the whole weekend leaving a beautiful blanket on the mountain peaks. We had awesome 2500' runs of fresh powder not unbearably crowded for a holiday weekend. Fatigued with sore muscles (mostly from playing Wii baseball) I fell a few times on my last run of the day. Falling isn't such a big deal especially on marshmallow but getting back up again is brutal work. I'd just cringe each time I felt myself lose balance or get stuck in a heavy drift because I could foresee the difficulty trying to snap into skis on a slippery vertical wearing myself out trying to keep my footing. I realized I should just turn in my gear and go to the bar. The sun, hidden in dense wet clouds most of the day, sat over the summit like a halo as I sipped Irish coffee awaiting the rest of my crew to take their last run. I sat on the chalet terrace enjoying the contrast of warm rays on my face and crisp air in my lungs thinking how perfect some days are.

This is a cool shot from the air of the back side of Half Dome in Yosemite National Park