January 17, 2003, Mt. Ashland, OR

Workin' 2 jobs, skiing less. so instead of driving to Newport, OR, returning to WA to fly to CA, I convinced Regine to go with me and stop and ski Mt. Ashland on the OR-CA border in the Siskiyou Mts. We stayed at Callahan's Inn which turned out to be super. Got warmly dressed in bibs & goretex parka, left the lodge, drove up thru the inversion to the ski area and found 40+ temps rising to mid 50's--not bad spring skiing for the 3rd week in Jan. Went to the restroom and came back to "WHERE ARE MY SKIS?" ...but, but, I put them in ... "NO YOU DIDN'T!" Well, it was late at night when I loaded the truck with what I thought was 2 pair of tele and 2 pari of XC. so Regine skied her catamounts nicely with silver t-3s lift served until the 3rd run down one of the black diamonds when her superloop exploded and she went shooting downhill face down. The shaft of the cog that is used to adjust the binding broke as the 110-lb finesse skier made a turn! I'll replace the throw with one from several I've taken off my skis (I'm SL free after numerous failures) but she's still going to stick to SLs on two pairs of skis. She climbed back to the lift where a nice patroller put on the lift for a downhill ride, snowboarded down and met her at the bottom with a snowmobile to take her to the lodge. Nice area (small) with some cool looking out-of-bounds skiing in a big bowl (snow conditions were not right for that). A tele chic in the parking lot gave me a Support Mt. Ashland Ski Area bumper sticker. I could support that [don't like the Mt. Hood Cooper Spur destination idea at all tho">. Ashland's a nice place with a nice little resort and nice little university and has a renowned Shakespeare festival of plays that runs more than 6 months. BTW, Regine quickly recouped her good spirits before we even hit the lift. abc