Monkey

It was our first time to Mt. Bachelor, near Bend, OR. Overall a great mountain with a lot of terrain to explore, especially below the tree line.

Friday was beautiful and clear, without a cloud in the sky. Little to no wind in the morning, with a tiny bit of wind in the afternoon. What an excellent day to go to a new hill. We went straight up to the top and took a few laps under the Summit Express. The view was fantastic and the groomers under the lift were fast and wide. In fact, the groomers were in excellent shape over the entire mountain, and many a high-speed run was had.

I took one run off of the Summit Express looking for a run called Cow’s Face, but I overshot it and ended up in Never Never Land. About half way down I remembered “Oh yea, it’s a cone”… a little extra traversing rider’s right at the very top put me way, way around the side of the mountain. I found some nice terrain, though, with some untracked snow that was fairly slushy but nice and smooth. I ended up at the boundary line on a thin, undulating traverse back to the front of the mountain. Eventually the traverse got a little wider, then it became groomed, which was nice at that point because I could pick up some more speed. Still, it took what seemed like forever to get back… felt longer than the traverse on Blackcomb back from the bowls you get to via Spanky’s. I ended up at the bottom of the hill near the Sunrise Lodge. A long trip for the few turns of goodness near the tree line, so I didn’t repeat it.

We hiked (walked, really, much like the walk to Exterminator at Crystal) up to the summit (me three times, Helen once). The terrain up there is nice. Dropping down into the large bowl in the center (via the helpfully named 1, 2, 3, or 4 runs) was nice and steep up top mellowing out into a decent bowl further down. The snow was pretty variable: a mix of wind packed, super-firm bordering on ice, and bits of blue ice that sounded and felt like little rocks. Helen and I took a run down West Ridge to head for the Pine Martin Lodge for lunch and found a whole lot more of that blue ice (see picture). We had to pick our way through it in spots, but we still managed to find some smooth patches of wind-packed that made for some nice turns. The wind effect on the upper part of this mountain is pretty dramatic. On a nice pow day the summit is probably awesome, but given the wind exposure I suspect that’s pretty rare.

The lower mountain is fantastic, too. We did many laps on the Outback Express, and a few on the Northwest Express. The groomed runs here are wide, smooth, and the snow quality was excellent. Much high-speed carving. The trees around both of these lifts look like they’d be really sweet with decent snow. As it was, the only thing I found in my few trips through the trees was firm and packed.

On Saturday it was quite windy, so we didn’t make any trips up to the summit and stuck to lower runs. You could see the wind whipping the snow around on the summit from below… didn’t look like much fun. More overcast than Friday, but the sun managed to show itself enough to make it a darn nice day, despite the extra wind.

Neither day seemed especially crowded… I’m not sure if I ever really waited in a lift line (beyond the first one up)… if I did, it was only a few people ahead of me.

The pizza at the joint in the Pine Martin Lodge was good, as was the small chocolate cake thing. “Service” was slow as hell. The burger and chili at the café upstairs the next day was excellent.

We stayed in Sunriver, in the Sunriver Resort. The room was very nice, and pretty much what I expect to get for the price. The drive from Sunriver to Mt. Bachelor was all of 20-25min, which was sweet. Dinner in the Owl’s Nest the first night was good, but too expensive, even for the quality and quantity of the food. Bar prices felt high, too. We didn’t go back, and opted for food in-town the next two nights.

Overall we had a great time, and would definitely go back. The drive down from our house in Carnation was just about 6 hours even… we went via Yakima, just because we’d never been there.