A Ski Bowl New Year

Once again this year Emily and I took a trip up to Mt. Hood Friday night to

see the New Year in at our favorite ski resort, Skibowl! Amy and Mo were able to get a sweet house in the town of Welches about 15 minutes down the mountain. Emails went out and a bunch of people showed up including their friends Chelsea and David, Adam st. Savior, Nick Hatch, Dennis Feeney, Jeff, and Liz Harper, Em & I and Mark & Sarah. Emily and I got an early start and got to the spacious house around 5:30 to meet Jeff and Liz for the first time from Portland who are friends with Amy. Jeff had the Canon 7D DSLR with him that I’ve been dreaming about for months so it was

cool to get a first hands on

feel for my dream camera. The two of them were planning on re-learning how to ski over the weekend on Mt. Hood. We ordered pizza and around 7:45 Amy and Aaron showed up to the house quickly followed by everyone else. Of course there were the dogs too, Cumo, Rosco and ??? who ran around the house playing with each other happily. We all left the house around 10pm to head up to Skibowl for a few runs before the fireworks. It was in the single digits so

we all dressed warmly but I was still a bit cold after downing 6-7 PBR’s before getting a ride there with Hartz and Simmons. My stomach felt off the rest of the night so I didn’t drink any more. The conditions were really wind-blown hardpack powder which was not what I was expecting but I was thoroughly enjoying my new Salomon Gun skis I had picked up late summer to replace my trusty 2001 Pocket Rockets which I had blown out last season. I had picked up the mounted skis on the way through Sandy at the Meadowlark Ski Shop there which did a good job mounting them although

they were slightly off center where my Rockets had been and I asked them to duplicate but I kinda like being an inch more centered for when I ski backwards.. which is often.

The others

skied down from upper bowl to the base for the fireworks but it was a super clear and cold night so Emily and I stayed at Upper Bowl to watch the fireworks below us and also check out the ones over the shoulder of Hood from the Mt. Hood Meadows ski resort. We later met up with everyone again and got some beers at the warming hut with a huge fire there to keep us warm. Hartz and Amy had a of course dressed up in ridiculous outfits for the night and other, very drunk, people got a kick out of them. Amy introduced me to the cat, named Pumpkin, who lives in the warming hut and hunts mice in the winter (see photo). He was cute and I got a kick out of how he sat in the rafters above us surveying the drunken scene on New Years. It was 2am before we were kicked out of the warming hut and headed back to the truck. Back at the house I

ate a little bit of food then set up our bags in a big room upstairs to pass out for the night.

In the morning we had a wonderful breakfast of banana chocolate chip pancakes and bacon courtesy Dennis Feeney and headed back up

to Skibowl around noon for a few more hours of skiing in still very frigid weather. We tried out the backcountry and looked at our usual 20-30 ft drops but the windblown snow was too hard to risk it so we passed on taking andy big drops. We skied for a while, changing out of our puffy jackets at one point when we all overheated and then sat in the warming hut again with beers until Emily and I said our goodbyes and headed down the mountain to head home for the night. I was still pretty tired after getting home Friday morning at 5am and not getting a good sleep on my sleeping bag on New Years eve so I was happy to crawl into my own bed after a movie and shower when we got home. Kevin and Alexa got back from California on Sunday evening after I got back from making up a day of work at Watershed I missed due to the blizzard and we all watched the 6th Harry Potter. Definitely not looking forward to returning to my regular working life on Monday....