pray for snow my ass. go find it!

the plan started in late december when i posted on tgr that i would be heading somewhere after new years eve to find solace in some recent snows. i heard from gimpy, franklezz, h-atlas and others. there was interest. it seemed like the best plan for success was with h-atlas. problem is, we had never met. so we would meet at kirkwood the Saturday before (we were leaving sunday, new years day). we never did meet, but spoke on the phone. she was leaning toward crystal, a trip i couldn’t make, but was going to check the weather when she got home from the wood. despite persistent pleas from her friends she heeded the noaa forecast which called for rain in washington so we made plans to head for bend to meet a friend of hers (someone else neither of us had met). long story short, monday we headed to dutch flat trailhead to see what tumalow mountain was all about. tumalow is across the street from mount bachelor and offers easy backcountry access, but rather short pitches even by tahoe standards. i’m guessing with a full snow pack it would be rather tame as well. we loved it though. our first run made the 8 hour drive worthwhile. and things would only get better from there.

meghan heads toward tumalow mountain, which is definitely holding some of tahoe’s snow

looking back at bachelor. the next day the top would open for the season

after a warm up run, meghan drops into something a little steeper.

and airs it out in the gut

before running it out into the untracked below

she made it look so fun i opted for the same

that right there is what powder snow sometimes looks like

then we ran into paul and ari.
the stoke factor went up a bit as did the gnar factor. ari let us know this rock we had been ogling was good to go

meghan is the california director for shejumps.org

this isn’t even why

ruh-roh. where’d she go

boom!

ari with the monster backflip

meghan gives it a go

but slightly under rotates this first try

she’s a gamer though so she climbed back up

this one was even less under rotated. so close. hey. where’s the gopro???

the day ends with a skin back to the top of tumalow and a long gentle untracked line back to the car. unfortunately i chose a long untracked line to a mile and a half from the car.

that night we hit the deschutes brewery restaurant for many beers and front row seats to the ducks victory.

the next morning we arrived to a desolate three creeks lake trailhead, dimming our hopes for a tow back to the tam mcarthur rim (5 miles away).

after two miles of skinning, not only did we get a tow, but we got a tow from the the guy running the yurts back here. we also scored a place to stay. the tam mcarthur rim is best accessed via these yurts operated by three sisters backcountry. seriously, check ’em out.