January 14-15, 2006, Mt Bachelor

Fighting the crowds of the MLK weekend was worth all the fresh powder that fell at Mt Bachelor over the long weekend. Bachelor's base of 120 inches and 170 inches at mid-mountain are some of the deepest in the US. We started off riding the Outback and Northwest chairs on Saturday. The northwest didn't open until about 11:00 or so, and up to that point the liftlines were pretty long. The northwest chair didn't have many people in line all day, and the snow was fantastic (about 2 feet of fresh in places).<br><br>The second day was spent on the other side of the mountain on the Rainbow chair. Although slower than the high speed quads, the Rainbow had great snow and few people. The wind was miserable on Sunday, and the fog kept freezing onto the goggles. Ended up with a little wind burn on the face, but well worth the 18 inches of fresh pow. The wind had swept much of the new snow along the top of the Rainbow chair into the westerly facing slopes of the small ridges, creating some unique snow conditions. Actually, it looked pretty prime for some "mini" avalaches. The weather cleared off after lunch and the summit view was great, though the summit lift didn't open (high winds and avalanche danger). Looks like more of the same for the coming week <br>