White River Thursday

The clock is ticking on the nordic ski days. Thursday was a blue sky day, even here by the river, so we headed back up to White River with Jan and Fred, this time to ski instead of snowshoe. We did bring the snowshoes as plan B, but the skis prevailed. I'll share a few photos of our expedition. This first one is from parking lot level. One climbs up the huge snowbanks to get to the start of the trail by that little blue sign in the bottom center right of the picture.

We did stop at a few other sno parks, just to see what was there. Lots of snow, and beautiful trees. But the sky was clear and we wanted to ski in the open. We can ski in trees and not see the sky on cloudy days. It really doesn't matter so much when you are in trees.

All the city families with kids and snowpans were on the sliding hill. It was OR spring break, after all. WA spring break starts now. Imagine, they plan it that way, so the ski places have two good weeks of business, the beach rentals stay full for two weeks, and restaurants see more customers.

Brindle (shown here looking back toward the parking lot, which you can't see because it's around the corner and down 10 feet or so) didn't know what to make of all these people in the middle of the ski trail. Neither did we. It was tricky to ski around, with all the holes and bumps and tromping in the snow. But we managed. Those kids looked like they were having a blast. I saw one little guy trying out his snowboard. He was not quite ready for prime time, so I imagine his parents told him when he could master this bunny slope, he could go to the big hill with the lift. I watched him travel about 10 inches, then face plant. He came up laughing.

We headed toward the mountain, along the river but not as close as when we were on snowshoes. The view of Mt. Hood took our minds off the hard work of uphill skiing.

There were some very strange tracks down the side of the ridge. Aliens? Probably snowshoers who wanted to make us wonder...

It was so sunny and warm, we got down to shirtsleeves again. It was all uphill for us. But that was the plan. If you go uphill from the start, you get to ski home fast.

We got to the place where everyone before us turned around. Lloyd and Brindle are here checking it out. The trail went on with only one set of ski tracks through the trees.

Fred and Jan are the little figures in the next photo, almost to the top, and they were ready for a snack. We tromped down a lunch spot, had our snack, as a young woman snowshoeing with her snowboard strapped to her backpack headed higher. As we prepared to go back, a couple of snowshoers clomped up, side by side, crushing all of our ski tracks. Sigh.

Lloyd headed back down with the dog, followed by Fred, who promptly face planted when his ski hit a hole. Jan headed down the side in fresh snow, and face planted a few feet past Fred. I barely stifled a giggle, and made sure they were okay, then wished aloud that I'd gotten those spills on video. I didn't want to leave them, so I waited for them to get up, and welcomed the snowshoers to our lunch spot. They looked like rookies so we forgave them their lack of trail etiquette. They were huffing and puffing but obviously enjoying themselves.

Everyone got back on their feet and headed down as Lloyd came back up to see what was keeping us. We usually have our radios, and I would have called him and told him our friends had crashed. But we forgot them that day. We skied back with great glee, much faster than we'd gone up.

Another successful play day, with a quick stop at the Sawmill for a nice Cloud Cap Amber.