April 15, 2010 Mt. Bachelor

We spent a stormy evening at a friend’s home on the outskirts of Bend. It was raining with thunder and lightning, and I was hoping the freezing levels were low enough for snow at the ski area. Our friends are not skiers so when we explained that we would be leaving their place at 7:15AM there was this bewildered look. I proceeded to explain our lift protocol of dropping our butts onto the first chair (or so) when lift operations open. This brought a more bewildered look, but they were willing to go along with us. Evidently the local wisdom is that if you can see the mountain in the morning, it’s a good day to go skiing (guess they don’t ski in storms…). And when we awoke the view of the mountains (the Sisters, Broken Top, Mt. Washington, etc.) was fantastic!

The last 5 miles of the road to Bachelor were snow covered, and as we rounded the last bend that big, white snow-covered volcano was glistening in the sun with a fresh coating of 6” of powder. O boy, o boy o boy -- another April powder day. We picked up our free lift tickets with our Warren Miller coupons and loaded our butts on the second wave. I could see a skin track from the base area and there were 4 beautiful sets of tracks scribed on the small cinder cone near the base area. As we neared the top of the Pine Marten quad, we could see folks descending from the Summit chair. We had a fun untracked line from the top, but the powder was slightly wind affected and it was still blowing. It appeared that most of the “locals” were working the upper mountain, so we enjoyed untracked lines for hours on the lower runs that were serviced by express chairs. The sun was warming the snow quickly and we spent time in the Northwest Express terrain. The tree lines in this area were uncrowded with endless powder, top to bottom. This weekend is a spring bash on the mountain and the party rigs were already arriving. Bachelor begins their spring operating schedule on April 19 until they close on May 16. Spring passes will be $99 starting the 19th. These April powder days are addictive

Wow - almost went down to use the WM pass too, but had a friend visiting... Crystal was just fine after the morning squalls shut down, though.

Very nice! Indeed, April powder is addictive!