Trip Report: Timberline Lodge

This year, my family spent Christmas at Timberline Lodge, a historic lodge built around 6,000 feet elevation on Mt. Hood as a WPA project during the Great Depression.  It's my favorite ski lodge.

The exterior of the lodge was featured in the movie The Shining.  In the winter, it is covered in snow.

A warning: I love skiing, and Timberline Lodge, a bit too much.  In case you don't want to look at as many pictures as I do, I have added special headers so you can jump around to the parts of the post that interest you most!

1. New Skis

On this trip, my brother and I got to test out our brand-new skis for the first time!  Here they are, in all their glory:

Cole's skis are on the left.  They have little blue windows in the tips, so you can see the snow beneath them.  We spent a while trying to explain the purpose of the window.  My skis are on the right, and I am very much in love with them.

I will talk about them in some other post.  <3 <3 <3

2. Christmas Eve Skiing

As far as I'm concerned, this is the perfect Christmas Eve:

The snow was perfect (it always seems to be in December on Mt. Hood) and wonderfully groomed.  Here's Cole on the snow, near the Molly's Express lift:

Icicles at the top of the Pucci lift:

3. Christmas Eve Dinner and "Festivities"

We had a delicious, many-course dinner in the Lodge.  It featured something called a "mouge bouge" (some appetizer I am definitely spelling wrong), tasty main courses, and a bottle of Timberline's own wine (also good).  Christmas is something of a tradition at Timberline.  They set up a huge tree:

There were little (stale) gingerbread men hanging from the branches.  I tried munching on one a few years ago.

Santa Claus also came down the chimney -- literally -- in front of a cheering crowd of little kids on the main floor and adults on the upstairs bar floor.  Both age groups cheered equally loudly at the display.  The chimney can be seen on the right side of this photo:

The "festivities" section of this post refers to some actually fun decorating of cookies and stuff, in addition to the thoroughly-creepy "magic show" that no one in my family could actually sit through.  The magician, after making an impressive Santa Claus out of balloons, went on to joke about treating little sisters like cats and locking them out of the house.  When he got to the sketch that involved pretending to have an unhappy baby locked in a little box, we left.

4. Night Hike

Mom and I went on a fun hike that night.  Our hike proceeded across the slopes:

The flash on my new camera captured a speckled photo of Mom:

We walked up towards the top of Jeff Flood Express, where we sat on one of the stopped ski lift chairs for a while.  Then we walked back towards the lodge.  Mom made a snow angel.

Back near the lodge, we walked into the deep snow.  The lodge looked a bit like a haunted ghost house:

We walked past the outdoor pool, which is pretty at night (note the fire/ice coloring):

There is a nice hot tub out back as well.  I didn't take pictures because there were a bunch of strangers looking up at me in their swimsuits, but it is a great place to go if you want the surreal experience of hot tubbing in a snow storm.  The hot tub is below this orange light...

At the end of the hike, we made a snow slide.  It went off into the darkness.

Here is the lodge at night.  The lit up room on the top floor is where I stayed with my brother, Cole.

I went back to that room and shed snow everywhere.

5. Christmas Day

On Christmas morning, I woke up to this view out my window:

Deathsicles (scary-looking icicles) were hanging from the hotel.

We started down the slopes right after breakfast.  This, my East Coast friends, is why I am spoiled:

Mt. Jefferson was visible in the distance:

Here's Cole and me on the slopes.  Cole's at the top of the Magic Mile lift, and I think I'm at the top of Jeff Flood Express.

The lift operators made an excellent snow frog.

6. A note on perfection

(Now we enter the "Miscellany" section of the blog post.)

I found my new happy place.  It is this run right here:

I have discovered my love for runs that are steep and full of meticulously-groomed packed powder.  I can close my eyes right now and remember that run... it was completely untouched.  Aaahhhhh.

7. The Shape 

This is the shape!  It was a shape made of snow and physics.

8. Family photos

Photos for the facebook profiles, I guess...

Mom:

Dad:

Cole:

Me:

9. The Lodge

In the winter, the lodge is half-buried in snow.

There are carved animals in the stairwell.

10. Desktop photos

If you've gotten this far, you get a prize!  Some relaxing new desktop photos!

Thanks for reading.  My next post will be shorter -- those with 21st-century attention spans will be accommodated!