October 28th, 2006, Timberline, OR

With the majority of October blown away studying for my professional engineering exam (which was Friday the 27th), and only a few days to get turns in, Todd and I decided to head up to the Palmer for October turns, given that I can't think of any other place in Oregon that would be worth riding right now.  There was some pretty serious lack of snow on the Palmer, but it was still plenty rideable.  The weather was perfect with sunshine all day.  At first, I wished I had brought my long board as the snow was rock hard ice and I was having to speed check constantly.  Fortunately, by about 10:00am it softened up nicely and we made several runs (so many I lost count).  Hero snow followed until about 2:00pm when we gave up.  There was even a nice little tabletop jump we played on in the afternoon.  The weather forecast for the next week is pretty dry; I'm hoping we get some snow soon and have a good winter! 

Here's a picture of Todd on the upper Palmer: 

The time change couldn't come at a better time. I'm writing this with a severe skiing hangover. Seems like we spent as much time making turns on rock as we did snow and my bases show it.

Yeah, it was a great day considering the lack of snow. It was nice to finally get my REAL October turns and break in the new bindings after that travesty on Bachelor the week before. And I never realized how good the beer is down in Govy. We may not have earned the turns, but I definitely earned those rounds of Ice Axe IPA. I was so tired when I got home that I could only get down two beers before crashing...at 7:00.

We need new snow. Lots of it.