Kevin's Weblog

3) Go skiing

Yesterday I went out to Mt. Hood Skibowl for my first day of skiing in 6 or 7 years. Muscle memory is pretty amazing, because after the first couple runs I was skiing pretty competently. I wasn’t quite ready to start dropping into double-black couloirs again, but I felt pretty good.

I was pretty happy with my choice of resorts. Skibowl is cheaper than other places about Mt. Hood and it’s the closest one to Portland. I got there in a little more than an hour. The mountain doesn’t have huge vertical, but there’s a lot of advanced terrain; more than I was up for exploring. The snow quality was good (13" new in the last 2 days) and it was suprisingly uncrowded for a weekend. I would joke about people staying home to watch the Oscars, except that the crowds started to pick up after 3PM, when the night skiing tickets start.

The only real complaint I had was that all the lifts are old, slow doubles. Real old. With no safety bar or leg rests, and small enough to make you feel a little nervous. I’m not a big guy, but I was happy to be riding solo most of the time so I had enough room to fully expand my shoulders and to be able to hook my arm around the center post for a little extra feeling of security.

The weather was what it was. With fresh snow comes snowfall. Over the course of the day it ranged from overcast to light flurries to heavy snowfall of the big, wet, soak-your-clothes, aren’t-you-glad-you-have-GoreTex snowflakes variety. For about 15 minutes there was sun and it was beautiful. I’m either forgetting exactly what I used to wear skiing, or I’m less cold-tolerant these days, but I was downright chilly for much of the day. Next time I’ll bring another layer, I guess.