January 8th, 2006, Mt Hood Meadows

Does BD make curved flicklock poles? Was it a telemark skier who sketched the hearts in the grime of my rear windshield today? These are questions I pondered as I drove home. Today was my first day in the Mt Hood Meadows Masters's Race program. The program is a series of 8 Sundays where I spend several hours in a small group with a Mt Hood Meadows race program coach with the objective of skiing with more precision and (depending on our wishes) gate training. So far, so good. Gates were not in our plans for today but will be later in the course, when there isn't fresh snow to be had.  Overnight snowfall was about 8"s yielding good skiing, however the crowds were really atrocious in the mid morning. This may have felt worse because we weren't waiting in the singles line. Heather opened around 1ish and the heaviest liftlines also dispersed around then. The upper, open parts of the canyon were heavily wind affected with awkwarder skiing than we had hoped, but in the trees the snow was very nice. I only took two runs on Heather and then headed home, as I badly needed to catch up on work.<br><br>When I got back to my car I found someone had drawn hearts in the grime on my rear windshield and finish. I suspect it was a telemark skier enamored by my license plate frame which reads, "My other car is a pair of Dynafits".<br><br>Note for those people who are wondering why I didn't do the Whistler rando rally yesterday, with holiday travels the week before and my workload I unfortunately didn't have enough time this year.

I chuckled when I read the first sentance of your post, as I saw someone with curved poles in line over on shooting star. But I thought they were Life Link?<br><br>Man, I couldn't believe the lines on SS in the morning. I left Hood express thinking there would be nice snow on o-ring/3-d and hit the biggest line I'd ever seen. The single line was about 20 people beyond the ropes, part way up the little hill to the west! Made me realize how nice mid-week is.<br><br>I also had some fun in the trees, thanks to the skier who showed me the traverse trail over from the top of heather.<br><br>Looks like there might be lots of freshies next weekend also!