A Slice of Paradise

I think I've finally chosen my favorite place.  Timberline Lodge, OR, where you get ski runs like this entirely to yourself:

Day 1

Allow me to walk you through my family's one-night stay at the Lodge (a Christmas present to me...).  We arrived Thursday morning and started skiing through the snow.

We had a great day of skiing through fresh powder, although we all got pretty wet because the snow turned to light rain at times.  I spent some time skiing through tree glades, which I may talk about in a future blog post.

Here's a route I took, in an effort to understand the appeal of deep powder on a deeper level:

By the end of the day, the conditions looked like this:

Meanwhile, the view out of our hotel window:

As the sun set, we hung out at the Ram's Head pub.  I worked on my laptop, we got dinner, I got a couple glasses of Timberline's own wine, and we played card games.  Out of the window, the sun set over Mount Jefferson and a sea of clouds:

After dinner, we went in the outdoor hot tub and swimming pool under a dark, cloudless sky.

Day 2

I slept restlessly.  Not because the bed was uncomfortable -- on the contrary, the feathertop mattress and mound of pillows was ridiculously comfortable.  Instead, I had resolved to be on the slopes at 9am when the lifts opened, and I kept having dreams in which my alarm didn't wake me up and I slept in until 10.  I woke up twice when it was still pitch black, once when the first hint of light was in the outside world, and finally once again at 7:40am, when I decided to just wake up for good.

The view out of my window:

Not many morning views that can beat that.  If you looked at the right angle, Mt. Hood was framed by ice:

I got dressed and went out to the main lodge area.  I first noticed the view out of the Ram's Head pub.  A picture of the Ram's Head has been my desktop photo for the last 2 months, and I've been wishing I was there for a while.  Tables in the Ram's Head (my happy place):

I found Mom, and we got some coffee from the following coffee pots (notice the background):

Then, after getting Cole out of bed, we all got breakfast.  The selection of waffle toppings caught my eye, so I prepared the ultimate waffle.

Thoroughly stuffed, we hit the slopes, which brings us back to the groomed packed powder.

Unlike the previous day, the weather was dry.

My skiing buddies, Dad and Cole:

Solo shots:

We had a great day skiing.  We skied low on the mountain...

...and high on the mountain.

Here's a path near the top of the Magic Mile chairlift I dubbed "Joy's Cutoff."  Very smooth skiing.

I learned a new skiing trick this day!  Dad taught me how to spin in a circle while skiing, without stopping.  Well, I have to slow down, but then I can spin 360 degrees and keep on skiing.  With time, I became an ambi-turner and could turn both left and right.  Dad's been able to do this for ages, but I'd never gotten it until this second day at Timberline.  With a bit of practice, I could string consecutive spins together.  I would be skiing down the mountain but spinning continuously in circles until I got dizzy!  Since I was feeling silly, I decided to call it the Mayan Infinite Spiral.

We continued skiing until the lifts closed at 4pm.  Near the end of the day, the routes were glowing golden.  Cole and I were both reminded of the course "Golden Forest" from the classic Nintendo 64 snowboarding game "1080."

The last run of the day featured some very smooth snow for me.

Then we returned to the lodge and went in the hot tub one last time as the sun set.  I bought a couple bottles of the Timberline wine, and we departed for Portland as the sun set over Oregon once more.

I just returned from the mountain 6 hours ago, and looking at these photos makes me want to go back already.

Epilogue: First World Problems

I'm going to France for Christmas, and I will be going skiing in the French Alps.  Some of my friends have been laughing at me and giving me quite a bit of trouble for grumbling that I won't be able to spend Christmas at Timberline.  "Joy, Joy, Joy," they say.  "That's not even a first world problem, that's a zeroth world problem.  'Oh no, I can't ski in Oregon, I have to ski in France.'  Come on, be reasonable."

I hope this blog post has given you a slight idea of why I grumble.  I am sure France is going to be awesome, and I am very excited to ski in the Alps, but... it's hard to top perfection.

This morning (day 2 of the trip described above), I woke Cole up briefly at 7:40am and told him to look out of his window.  He looked out at the sunrise reflecting off the mountain, and said, "Wow, that's pretty nice.  Okay, fine, you're allowed to complain about France."

Summer Skiing

Hello, blog readers.  I said I would write about a hike in Washington...but I left that coast without downloading the relevant photos, and I cannot currently find the battery charger for my camera, so I have no interesting photos for you.  A shame; there was much talus in that set of photographs.  Now, either I get to post a boring and pictureless essay about a hike you cannot visualize, or I can post something entirely different.  I will post about my intense ski craving!

(from Bobcatnorth's flickr photostream)

These years when I get ski cravings in June are always tough.  It is just So Very Long until late November, and these cravings persist.  Really, it is a problem.

 (from Simon Wex's flickr photostream)

So, my thoughts naturally turn to summer skiing.  I hear you can do that in the southern hemisphere.  Or in the far, far North.  For example, here is Las Leñas, in Argentina:

It comes with its own wintery ski village, and its season is June-October.

(from parq's flickr photostream)

Seems cozy.  It would suffice.  Or hey, Whistler Blackcomb is open 11am-1:30pm each day.  That is basically no time, but on the other hand, just thinking about the words "Whistler Blackcomb" makes me want to go buy plane tickets.  Whistler in the summer, people:

(from Megan Mallen's flickr photostream)

Alright, fine, I may have a problem.  And maybe I shouldn't buy plane tickets to Whistler for only 2.5 hours of skiing each day.  (Round trip airfare to Vancouver is about $500 right now.  Yes, I checked.)  I will resign myself to feeling uncomfortably nostalgic for skiing from now until late November.  In the meantime, I will post this photo of my last ski trip, to Mount Sunapee in New Hampshire:

Feel free to click on it for the larger view, because many-pixel ski photos are great.  I will also post this photo of my amazing and wonderful skis:

Mine are the excellent black-and-orange ones in the middle.

Sigh.  You know, some of you people out there could convince me to block off a week of my summer for a ski vacation... until then, back to work I guess.

Winter: A Retrospective

Now that Spring is thoroughly upon us, let's look back at the photos of wintery Boston, Pittsburgh, and skiing photos that I never got around to posting.

Boston

(Boston first.)  It was so cold that the statues curled themselves into little balls to keep warm:

There were huge snowflakes:

...leading to snow accumulation.

Steam clouds at MIT:

Pittsburgh

In Pittsburgh, things were covered in ice:

There were deathsicles, and a dog named Rusty.  Unrelated.

Mount Sunapee Skiing

Ternus and I went skiing up at Mount Sunapee in New Hampshire.

 

The skiing was cheap, as there was a weekday student discount, and the slopes overlooked a beautiful frozen lake:

I was using my wonderful new skis, so I took them for a trip down the endless mogul field.

I'm still pretty bad at moguls, but I am working on it.

Happy Spring, everyone!

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!