Conditions Report
Base building snow has arrived at Mt. Bachelor, OR and there are only 15 days until the lifts start spinning at Mt. Bachelor (assuming the weather cooperates).
When I arrived at Bachelor today, the amount of snow on the roadside was very little. The only promising sight was some good looking tracks coming off of Cinder Cone.
Traversing over towards the Cinder Cone, the snow guns were blowing snow like crazy.
Hopefully this means that Mt. Bachelor is confident that this snowfall is here to stay. The snow guns were blowing all day long and it appears they will keep making snow tonight.
The current forecast for Bachelor has 6″ of snow forecast Tuesday and Wednesday.
After skinning awhile longer I hit the top of the Cone. The skiing conditions up on the cone were much better than you would expect, for only 5” showing on the base snowstake.
I expected today to be a day of messing around on a combination of snow and rock. However, I hit very few rocks today. As long as you don’t make your turns too deep, you’re fine.
The first few turns at the top of the Cone were a little bit windblown. However, below the snow was soft, sweet and skied almost like any other powder day.
I ended up going down the north side of the face of Cinder Cone. Because of the poor snow coverage in the trees, I started making boot-pack laps from the top of the trees on the steeper side of the cone.
It was a powder day without the crowds. Other groups of skiers and riders would come up, hike for one run, and then go home. For anyone looking for some skiing in the next couple days, there is still plenty of untouched snow on the Cone.
I logged seven Cinder Cone runs today, an estimated 3,500 feet of vertical.
Skiing back to the highway was not as bad as expected. It almost felt like taking the last run of the day during the ski season. The run back to the car included some fresh powder in the half pipe, some fun skiing in the grassy snow, and of course plenty of pushing out to the highway.
More snow is on the way for Oregon. Hopefully the last-minute miracle storm comes in to get us skiing.
