Mt. Bachelor, OR 4/15/07

Tony Crocker

Administrator
Staff member
Sunday made this weekend worthwhile, though it was not the effortless corn I remember from April 2000 and May 1990. There had been about 10 inches early in the week, a partial warmup Friday, then Saturday's fog, wind and maybe 2 inches more. Sunday dawned clear and cold for April, 16F at the base and 10F at the Summit. But with minimal wind the spring sun did soften a few areas to corn, the intermediate runs on Sunrise and Skyliner in particular. By noon it was probably 30+F at the base and ~25F up high.

I got up there at 9AM, took a warmup on Skyliner, then 2 runs on Summit before meeting my hosts (high school classmate Kirk Reynolds and wife Nanci), their friends Brian and Mary-Louise (Aspen ski instructor) and Schubwa before 10AM. The second Summit run I took the short hike and traversed into the western part of the Cirque Bowl, which had tracks from blown in snow. Recent wind must have been more from the north than normal, because the subsurface was hard, and I would hit it on about half the turns. A return to this area with our friends an hour later was easier as skiers had spread around the new snow for a more consistent surface. Exposed eastern sections of Cirque Bowl had wind-stripped hardpack, so we avoided those.

Our friends headed over to Northwest for several runs. The top of Northwest had been tough in the fog Saturday, but now these small bowls had windsifted powder for maybe 500 vertical, then would dump into a single black cruiser back to the lift. We ventured into the trees a couple of times, but not for long as at that lower elevation there was some crust.

This group moves fast, and with the similar season passholder mentality that I've observed from admin in SLC and Craig Morris in Fernie, like to hammer it hard for 3 hours and then go home. In this case, Kirk and his friends skied 22,000 in about 3 1/2 hours.

I wanted to check out the backside of Summit, which had the memorable corn in 2000 but would likely be more variable this time. Kirk and his friends were convinced it would be a coral reef, plus if you go back there you're committed to nearly 2,000 vertical of ungroomed plus the 3 mile cattrack to Northwest. Since I'm only up there every 7 years I had to go check it out about 2PM. By then the sun had been working on the south exposure for some time and the surface was a pleasant surprise. No hard snow, and the surface was the "cream cheese" that admin described in Mineral Basin (similar exposure) last week.

So I went back for 2 more laps before Summit closed at 3:15. Next run I traversed farther to west exposure. This still had the windsift powder like the top of Northwest, but for a longer 1,000 vertical down to the tree line. The snow in the trees was heavier, and at this point I could feel the toll of the day's vertical. Final Summit run I traversed all the way to the NW exposre above Pine Marten Lodge. A bit more wind effect and work here, so I decided to call it a day at 3:30PM, which allowed me time to shower and change at Kirk's house before catching my flight home.

Big vert day...for me anyway.
Yes, 40,700, 5th highest day lifetime.
 
Come out to Mt. Bachelor on the right April weekend and I'll show you. This one took some work, but in the perfect corn of 2000 (or last year, from what I recall of Schubwa's reports) you could have done 50K easily.

One component of the extra work is the reduced grooming since Powdr Corp took over in 2003. They immediately sold off over half of their grooming machines. Someone here can enlighten me with the finer details of the grooming process, but at Bachelor this weekend I never saw the "corduroy lines" that were ever present on groomers at Vail on April 2, for example. So I surmise that grooming is a multistep process and they now skip at least one step at Bachelor to save money. Also, that 3-mile exit road from the backside was less smooth than in 2000, and occasionally you would hit a sticky patch, which I do not recall in April 2000 even though it was 10-15 degrees warmer then. Kirk has mentioned this issue several times. He says, "To us advanced/powder skiers this doesn't matter much, but intermediates have to work a lot harder now." And Mt. Bachelor, pre-Powdr-Corp, was easily one of the top 5 intermediate mountains in North America IMHO. This is not a "brutal grooming" situation like Mark Renson talks about in the East, since Bachelor has abundant off-piste alpine and tree skiing.

To wrap up the rant, in the 2 hours I skied after Kirk & company left, I rode chairs with other Oregonians and several of them, unsolicited, went off on how Powdr Corp were "greedy corporate bastards," and/or hoped they would sell Mt. Bachelor, as they have evidently just sold Alpine Meadows and Homewood. Ticket sales are supposedly down 8% this season despite being loaded with snow since mid-November. I told Kirk that if Powdr Corp manages Killington this way, the New Englanders will not be as polite as the Oregonians and Powdr Corp will be crucified with negative publicity.

At any rate, anyplace you can get 40K of this quality of skiing on April 15 can't be that bad, and I would encourage any of you FTOers to give Mt. Bachelor a shot sometime. And it does appear that Northwest and the 360 degree Summit skiing will stay open one more week. Kirk has lived in Bend 23 years, and he says 50% is about right for Summit's shutdown rate through March. After that your odds of Summit being open rise steadily. This is an area when I've been lucky. I'm 15 out of 17, and all 3 of the closures were in April. Another example of don't trust your own occasional experience; get some long term stats or local input before drawing conclusions. For advanced skiers the experience does hinge heavily on Summit running, and the only area I've seen with greater dependence on one lift is Las Lenas. Some would compare to the top of Mammoth, but that is closed midwinter about 30%, and even then you still usually have chairs 3, 5 and 22.

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I skied Bachelor Sat, Sun, Mon April 7,8, 9 and that Monday was the first day of the storm that brought full-on winter conditions back to the mountain for Tony's experience. It was snowing fairly heavily with winds between 35-45 MPH at top of Pine Maarten. Visibility was no more than 100 feet until you got 1/2 way down. NW was closed, as was Summit (had been open previous day, all day under bluebird skies). All open lifts ran at 60% of full speed. I stayed mainly on the Outback chair and enjoyed blown-in up to 12" deep on the sides of most trails and in the trees. But the upper approaches to most trails were into enough wind to serously impede forward progress on traverses. I left @ 3:00 pm as my face had taken enough 'sand blasting' that day.

It was my first ever visit to Bachelor and the PNW. Spent a day each @ Crystal and Hood Meadows on April 5 and 6 respectively under sunny skies and mild temps. IMO Crystal is an awesome experts' mountain for steeps and bumps, and that's what I skied all day. Meadows only redeeming qualities are the fast lifts, scenery Heather Canyon and the runs off the Hood River Express - the rest of Meadows is lame. I enjoyed Bachelor and was happy to experience the summit and ski my quads off on the NW and Outback lifts....but 3 days was enough there.

I'm glad I made my first ever PNW road trip for the experience and sheer amount of skiiing I did in 5 days, but the driving involved between them and terrain monotony of Meadows and Bachelor do not make a return trip to these areas worth it for me in the future.

I had originally planned a week @ Tahoe for the same period but chickened out in late Feb when Tahoe was in really poor condition. Maybe next year?
 
Wise move this year IMHO. There's been up to 18 inches of recent snow at Tahoe, but it started 4/11 and coverage/conditions were getting worse by the day before then.

I would have expected good off-trail Summit corn 4/7-8 before the storm hit Mt. Bachelor. I think I got lucky again. Yesterday it rained, then an inch overnight, still 45MPH winds and Summit closed today. This time it will need to dry out and warm up before it will be good.

Once you get into late March or April, I strongly recommend half of that projected Tahoe trip be spent at Mammoth. The extra driving will be easy compared to what you just did in the PNW.
 
Admin":2oi3l9bq said:
I don't know how the hell you do it. I break 20 and I need a nap.
I was taking a nap before Tony even took his first run off the backside. I left at 11:30 and went across the street to get in :45 on my skate skis. I have PPP coming up in five weeks and Powdr Corp. closed the Nordic area on Sunday, with over 100" of snow still on the ground. I'm doing male pairs and have the skate ski (8K), run (5 miles) and sprint leg (.4 mile) as my duties. I did rally to go to yoga at 4:00. That being said, I still don't know how Tony skis all day like that!
We did get some abbreviated pow shots off NW. We kept tuning left into Snapshot Alley and then Gerry's Bowl for about .5 klicks of decent freshies. They should have followed me into (secret spot) but didn't take the bait! See my Christmas post. As reported, lower down was small frozen fruit (grapes and strawberries) groomers. We headed for the Summit and all this time the sun was working it's magic on the south-facing slopes.
At first, Kirk and his wife were wondering who the hell I was. It didn't help to explain that "I met Tony on the Internet". I do know Brian and his wife from Cloud 9 Photography, they've met me and my wife Debbie from the mountain. Tony had e-mailed me about the prospects of skiing corn off the Summit chair earlier in the week. I invited myself to join him last weekend and it was a lot of fun!
 
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