Mt. Hood Conditions Report | Spring Day in “Juneuary”

For the dedicated skiers in Oregon, January ( Juneuary ) never seems to be a good month.  To wrap up the general trend, the Cascades are dumped on in mid-late december enough to hold a base to open the ski areas.  When Juneuary finally comes around, the snow coverage on the 1st of the year is the best coverage the mountains will have for exactly one month, 31 days, or 744 hours.

The conditions range in severity from ice-rink-hard to mashed potatoes, Cascade concrete, and slurpie slush.  Does this suck?  Yes and no.  Yes because, well, skiing pow would certainly be much better.  No because despite the sub par conditions, the trend of January being “Juneuary” is like the calm before a storm.

It’s a time used to hone one’s skills for the upcoming months of powder skiing.  It’s a time for getting used to new equipment you may or may not have gotten for christmas.  It’s a time for throwing snowballs at people riding the chairlift and for getting caught building jumps by patrol…

It’s a time for backflips as well as a time for loosing your goggles from tomahawking through slush.  It’s a time to hit all the features that will be gone by the end of the next few storms.  It’s a time for skiing the dark runs at night and a time for safety meetings…

It’s a time for exploring and making a checklist of each and every line to hit when it does in fact snow.  It’s also a time for testing that checklist whether or not it’s a good idea to do so in those conditions.  Most of all, it’s a time for having unrestricted ridiculous amounts of fun. Period.  And with that, here’s to the good times spring skiing in January.