April 23, 2008 Mt. Bachelor

It all started Monday evening, April 21, while parked in the Alpine Meadows parking lot. I was checking the weather forecast along the west coast and noticed this large blob on the radar screen just west of Oregon. After focusing on the weather forecast for the direction of the blob, I started to get excited and asked Jill to look at the forecast. The Oregon Cascades from Mt. Hood to Mt. Bachelor was forecasted to receive a snow storm with freezing levels under 3000' for Tuesday through early Friday. I looked in the parking lot and it was bare and dry just like it was last month. We haven't seen a snowflake in 6 weeks and have enjoyed spring conditions in the Sierra. But all the powder trip reports from TAY and all those images finally overcame us. Jill just smiled and said "yeah, I'm ready for some cloudy skies and powder". Being the caring person many of you know I am, I did the "right thing". We left Tahoe Tuesday at 7am, and at Sunriver, OR we drove the backroad up to Mt. Bachelor, arriving 9 1/2 hours after leaving Lake Tahoe. After 5 miles the road became snow covered and there were only 2 sets of tire tracks on the roadway with 6" deep snow. Oh boy, I might have to put the chains on. What a nice problem to have. As we pulled into the Bachelor parking lot, the snowbanks were 15-20 feet high. It was snowing and there was 6" of light powder in the lot. We were like kids in a candy store. We parked about 20 feet from the Sunrise lodge in the camper and fell asleep to the winds howling and snow falling.

We woke to an additional 3" of new, light powder with temperatures in the low 20's and the wind still blowing. It's good to be back to the PNW. Bachelor's spring operating hours are 8am-1pm and only the Sunrise Lodge is open. Until April 27, the Sunrise, Skyliner and Summit express lifts are operating. If the Summit chair is closed due to weather then the Rainbow chair operates. Lift tickets are $36. From April 28- May 18 (closing), only the Sunrise and Summit chairs will operate. It was an enjoyable powder day. The upper terrain, near the top of the lifts, was wind affected but any of the treed terrain had boot deep powder, probably due to the 8" they received the previous day. After 4 hours of powder and packed powder, we packed up and drove to Mt. Hood where the storm center seemed to have stalled.