Old mountain, new areas

I like to think that you wouldn't know it by watching me, but I only learned how to ski two years ago.  After living in Bend for two years, I was afraid that they'd make me leave town if I didn't take up skiing, snowboarding, or snowmobiling (possibly all three), and I had nowhere to park a snowmobile.  Bachelor offered a unique deal: a five-lesson package, with gear rental included on the days of all lessons, and a 12-day pass upon completion of the course.  Half price on your season pass the following year, and 25% off the season pass the year after that.  Just like a drug dealer, they got me hooked, then jacked up the price.

I do my level best to make them lose money on me.  For the past two years, I've been in the top 25 on the consumer leaderboard for vertical per day and turns per day, usually without meaning to achieve such goals.  I just go to the mountain early, stay late, and ski as much as I can between those times.

In the past two seasons, I've explored most of the mountain, but there were two areas I had yet to breach: the backside, and the cinder cone.  This season, as part of my Bend Bucket List, I've skied both.

On February 19, Bachelor had a gorgeous bluebird day.  You could see for miles, the air was crisp and clear, and the often-brutal Bachelor winds were nothing more than a pleasant breeze.  It was a record-setting day for Bachelor--the entire mountain was crowded with skiers and snowboarders, and I decided it was a perfect day to explore the backside territory.  I started with a run through the west bowls, accessible from Northwest Chair, just to get an idea of what was in store for me.  On a day that busy, it's impossible to find an area of untracked powder larger than a common bedroom, and rare to find a place on the mountain where you can't see at least one other person.  This held for the west bowls, too, but there were still long moments of peaceful isolation.  I could hear a bird singing somewhere south of me, and the view in that direction showed an expanse of National Forest which appeared untouched between the mountain and the horizon.

Later, I convinced a friend to join me on a run from the Summit chair down the back of the mountain.  I ended up skiing the backside three times (three and a half, if you count the West Bowls) that day.  If I'd had more time, I would have spent the entire day back there.  The runs may have been shorter, until you hit the catchline road to bring you back to Northwest Chair, but for me it was an entirely new place, with new views, new terrain, and large, drifted cliffs of snow.  Despite the tracks laid all around me by those who came earlier in the day, I got to feel like an explorer.  Hopefully I can get back there again before I leave town in two weeks.

Somewhere inside this snow sculpture, there's a tree caked in ice.

Kwolh Butte, seen from Bachelor's backside.  I had wanted to make a hike to that crater as one of my last adventures in town, but it would be an overnight trip in snowshoes, and I don't know enough local crazy people to help me break that much trail.

The next weekend, I came down Leeway from the top of Pine Marten chair and watched a solid line of riders hiking their gear up the cinder cone (a small feature of the mountain prominent enough to be the namesake of a local brew).  The front side of the cone is visible from the West Village parking lot, and is usually heavily textured with the tracks of dozens of skiers and boarders.  I had been in powder between Outback and Northwest chairs most of the morning, and was ready for a more unique ride, so I shot down through the valley, coasted as high up the cone's flank as I could manage, and hiked the rest of the way with my skis on my shoulder.  The trip was much shorter than I had anticipated, and I even managed to convince a coworker to join me later that afternoon.  On both trips, I had to take a shorter route that brought me out of the trees on the lower end of Leeway (he would only agree to join me if I found an easy way through the trees for him, and he didn't want to hike back to a lift from the bottom of the cone's front side), but the slope was steep enough to make turning in the deep powder easy and more fun than I had expected.

A view of the far rim of the cinder cone; a view you can't reach by any ski lift.

Like the backside, I'd like to ski the cinder cone again, but if I don't, at least I got the chance to try it.  Even on a mountain so familiar to me that I no longer carry a map (and often serve as a map to people who have forgotten theirs), it's great to find brand new areas to explore.