In Search of Snow
· Jun 7, 03:11 PM
Ever since last Spring’s epic crust cruise, I’ve wanted to go back to McKenzie pass and ski more of the lava flow. In particular, the North Side and Belknap Crater looked so wide open and fun. I almost went last weekend, but was turned off a bit by the warm temps. When Lars floated the idea of going out there yesterday afternoon I was immediately interested. When I woke up this morning to see an overnight low of 38 in Sisters and 34 up at Bachelor I was, as they say, all in.
We decided that since the road is currently open to bikes but not cars, we would make it a proper adventure and ride up to the snow with our skis on our backs.
We started to get a little worried when we got to Windy Corner and there were only patches of snow on the lava fields. Belknap crater was in the cloud, but from what we could see, there wasn’t much going to be too much skiing, at best we were looking at a few strides, hiking over lava, a few more strides and repeat. And there were not going to be any sweet turns.
Once we hit the top we rode our bikes up the path to the Dee Wright Observatory and played tourist.
Then it was back down the road. We’d found a forest service road (or so it appeared) right before the last mile or so of climbing up to the pass and it looked snow covered. We put on our ski stuff and headed off following the road. It was a bit slow and sun-cupped, but hey, it was skiing! And then we went around the corner and the snow disappeared and the road was back. Take skis off, walk, put skis on, repeat. We actually only had to take our skis off a couple of times before we made it to Lava Camp Lake Campground where our road ended. We set off through the woods (it was pretty decent classic skiing – well kinda) for a ways to see if the ski could be salvaged. After a while we made for the lava flow to see what we could find. We were hoping for something a little more skiable (and a little more open) for the return to our bikes.
We lucked out a bit. When we hit the lava flow there was a pretty good ribbon of snow along the base of it that had been sheltered from the sun by the forest. It wasn’t good skiing, but it wasn’t that bad either. Certainly no worse than a lot of crust skis finish. Dirty soft snow, but at least we were gliding. We got up on the lava flow at one point when the sun lifted. Sure enough Belknap Crater was still snow covered, but if I’m going to ski that this year it looks like it will have to be a bike/hike/ski adventure. I think we were probably a week to 10 days late for getting pretty good crust up there. Too bad really.
All in all it was a great adventure, but definitely not worth repeating this year (at least the skiing McKenzie part). On the ride down we passed the TAI bike camp riding up. I hope the skis on our backs inspired at least a little conversation (or head scratching at least).
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