Mt Bachelor 12/13 Summit Open

So they've been teasing us with a weekend opening for days and it happened. It was the perfect bluebird Saturday weather combined with an amazing early season snowpack on the upper slopes of Bachelor. We have had a weeks-long series of fronts, giving us numerous rain and snow events on the lower hill. But the snowline was always pretty low and so it snowed all the time above 7000' on a 9000' mountain. I'm estimating we have 6-7 feet on the upper mountain. And everything was covered, no rocky ridges, no bare reef, nothing. With NWX and Outback Express still closed, they didn't open the South Bowls, but you could traverse high and get the upper West Bowls above the top of NWX. A very sick day.


#1 son Carson took the first three pics while I was riding with them. Our first run we hiked to the true summit and dropped in.


About 4-5" of nice fluff on a seriously solid snowpack made for big smiles. You can see the terminal moraine of the most recent glaciation on the north flank of the mountain.


On the NW slopes above the top of Pine Martin. I've never seen this kind of complete coverage this early here.


This was around the back just astride the ski area boundary about 10:30 this AM.


The "Moraine Hill" shown in this pic never gets skied nearly 360 degrees this early except today.

I was just reading on wasatch weather weenies how horrible things are across the board in Washington resorts. Are they all at a lower elevation or are you guys faring better in Oregon?

Pictures look great and seems like hardly anyone is there.

Washington resorts are lower.

Also, Bachelor is on the Cascade Front (nobody calls it that out here, but I wanted to put it into language that Utahns would understand). That gives it more continental cold air to work with. The Washington ski areas (with the exception of Mission Ridge) are on the Cascade Back, where the Pacific can moderate temps. Cliff Mass, who schooled the Wasatch Weather Weenie, explains that the only reason there is snow at Snoqualmie (where the Silver Fir lift is) is because cold from the front spills into the back over the pass. Go to the same elevation (3000') away from the pass and there is much less snow.

Skied down from Camp Muir on Rainier today. Plenty of snow up high (10,000') and not much down low.

Skied down from Camp Muir on Rainier today. Plenty of snow up high (10,000') and not much down low.

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During the summer I hiked to Muir twice with in 36hrs..Long slog.
The snowfield looks like it could be a hoot to ski..

Long. Not particularly steep. The classic non technical steep is the Southwest Chute on Adams. St. Helens' Worm Flows is also a good one.

skrad":wuk08psj said:

The classic non technical steep is the Southwest Chute on Adams.

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Before my PNW June/July 20-12 trip with Patrick I was researching backcountry options and that one looked like the potentially highest quality. Access and scale are comparable to the guided trip I did on Mt. Shasta in 2011. Altitudes are 2,000 feet lower, but you still need to be in great shape if you want to take on something like that as a daytrip.

Having done both (Shasta Avalanche Gully/ Left of Heart down) as day trips I would say Shasta is harder - the climb is steeper and scarier.

Skrad":1l4e9mn8 said:

Washington resorts are lower.

Also, Bachelor is on the Cascade Front (nobody calls it that out here, but I wanted to put it into language that Utahns would understand). That gives it more continental cold air to work with. The Washington ski areas (with the exception of Mission Ridge) are on the Cascade Back, where the Pacific can moderate temps. Cliff Mass, who schooled the Wasatch Weather Weenie, explains that the only reason there is snow at Snoqualmie (where the Silver Fir lift is) is because cold from the front spills into the back over the pass. Go to the same elevation (3000') away from the pass and there is much less snow.

Skied down from Camp Muir on Rainier today. Plenty of snow up high (10,000') and not much down low.

Click to expand...

I should probably know better than to argue about this after seeing how hard-headed some people from Utah were on whether Snowbasin was Wasatch Front or Back. (I say Back.) But to me, most of Bachelor is Cascade Back, not Front, and it could be argued that all of Bachelor is Cascade Back (or Cascade Crest). To me, the Front faces the Pacific Ocean and the Back does not. Since the Three Sisters are obviously Cascade Crest, it can be argued that Bachelor is East of line between Sisters and the highest Cascade peaks to the South (Bailey, Theilsen and McLoughlin) so it is all back. Bachelor is also East of the Pacific Crest Trail which runs North-South between The Sisters and Bachelor (and I realize the PCT does not always follow the actual crest). If you think the Crest includes Bachelor, then most of the lifts are East/Back of the crest and only Northwest and Outback are West/Front of the Crest. Another argument could be made that Bachelor is Cascade Back because snow is drier than many other Pacific NW ski areas since it is on the edge of the high desert.

I'm also not sure that all of Snowqualmie is Cascade Back. From zoomable map at http://www.fs.usda.gov/Internet/FSE_DOC ... 53479.html it looks like Alpental is West of Pacific Crest Trail and the Pass, and the other lifts straddle or are very close to the trail and most of them are West of or directly South of the Pass. That makes them Cascade Front or at least Cascade Crest, not Back. I also think that it is cold air spilling over from the Back that allow snow at the relatively low elevation is this area, not the other way around.
:snowball fight:

tseeb":2yy8ud5t said:

But to me, most of Bachelor is Cascade Back, not Front, and it could be argued that all of Bachelor is Cascade Back

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Be careful with your Front or Back terminology for each region. I live on the Front Range of Colorado which is very much not anywhere near the western side of the Rockies, and very much East of the divide. Front is not necessarily the side of prevailing wind/weather for each region or mountain range.

Is a better way of thinking about it is that the Front is the side with most of the population and Back has much less?

That works for CO, UT and WA and also for OR where there is a lot more population in Portland, Eugene and Salem than in Bend. It does get confusing when mountain range is narrow in places like the Wasatch and some of the Cascades. While it's easy to think of the Cascades as only being one peak wide, I know they are much wider than that when you include the foothills as I've driven across them in OR and and in Northern CA. I also realize that Front Range in CO is the area where most of the population lives and not the Rockies.

For Oregon, how about where the snow/water drains. If into the Williamette, it's Front, if into the Deschutes, it's Back. Same easy call in the Sierra, drain to Central Valley vs. Great Basin.