SheJumps Get the Girls Out Mt. Bachelor, Winter ’13 Recap!

February 9, 2013

Giggles and smiles and bright colors everywhere... the girls were out in full force for our first ever SheJumps Get the Girls Out Mt. Bachelor!

What is it about shredding around on snow with a crew of ladies all day that makes you feel so amazing? It is incredible how fun, silly, motivational, and inspiring a day out skiing with a group of women can be!

We had ladies travel to Mt. Bachelor from all over the west: Washington, Idaho, Nevada, California, and of course from all over Oregon. It is pretty unusual to ski with a group of ladies, so it was worth the travel effort to enjoy this special day!

We met about 35 ladies at the bottom of Pine Marten in the morning, and started our day by fanning out all over the front of the mountain. It was awesome to watch a ton of brightly-colored ants spread out and fly down! By the second run, we were already split up. It's crazy how fast that will happen!

Some ladies hit the terrain parks off Skyliner, some explored the trees off Northwest, and a crew of about 15 of us rode the Summit chair and hiked to the top of the mountain for great views and some good, old-fashioned hunting for windblown pockets of snow!

It took some hiking, some traversing, and some rime skiing, but we definitely found what we were looking for in the gullies above Pine Marten and Northwest: smooth pockets of fluffy snow! We were psyched.

We all met back up for lunch with even more ladies who had missed us in the morning. Our special guest Meghan Kelly -- Regional Coordinator for SheJumps in California --  introduced the organization by sharing her personal experiences with SheJumps including making new friends, and finding other women to help her learn new outdoor skills. We also talked about ideas for future SheJumps events and what a central Oregon chapter could be all about.

In the afternoon, we rode the Summit chair again and dropped off the backside for some afternoon corn turns in the sunshine. We enjoyed gullies, trees, playing around on the wall of voodoo, and of course jumping! We wrapped up the day with a classic 4 PM cone hike. We dropped in to inner cone, made some great turns in soft snow, and even found freshies in the parking lot glade! 

With all the out-of-towners coming to visit, it was important to let Mt. Bachelor's best features shine: lots of awesome skiing on all aspects, 360 degrees off the summit, on a beautiful and sunny day! The cone hike was just icing on the cake : )

We headed back down the hill to downtown Bend, where our friends at Crow's Feet Commons hosted our après ski party! We all had a great time reliving all the action from the day, exchanging phone numbers, and planning future days together on the snow!

Thanks so much to everyone who came out and made it a day to remember!

Broken Top's 3:00 Couloir

February 1st, 2013

Skiers: Erik Schmidt and Lindsey Clark

"Hey! We got here in 8 minutes!" I yelled over to Erik as we were parking our snowmobiles at the wilderness boundary near Broken Top.  It is about 5.5 miles from Dutchman Flat to where we parked, so I was pretty impressed by how quickly we got there. "The snow was really easy to ride!"

We put on our skins and cruised across the big meadow leading to the glacially-eroded crater, or what I consider to be the front of Broken Top. I fell in love with Broken Top the moment I laid eyes on him (and yes, he is a him). Craggy and pointy and crazy looking... my kind of mountain for sure! An hour skinning across the meadow gives me plenty of time to stare at the mountain: enjoying its unique character, remembering epic ski days past, and dreaming about adventures that are about to go down.

Our objective was 3 o'clock couloir. The ski lines in the crater are named after the numbers on a clock: with the summit being 12:00, you can work left to see the popular climbing routes 9:00 and 11:00 or work right to see some fun ski lines like 1:00 and 2:30.

3:00 is a giant ski slope walled in by orange and brown striped cliffs. I'd skied on that side of the mountain a few times before, but never this particular line. 3:00 can get hairy with plenty of rockfall and balls of rime ice littering the snow, so timing is important. On this day, the time was right!

We skinned up the apron and into the couloir proper. Erik, always up for a challenge, skinned all the way to the top, up and through some cliffs to the left which he dubbed the 3:00 variation. I switched to bootpacking about a third of the way up, traded my ski pole for an ice axe, and felt like a ski mountaineer for the first time in over a year. Yes!

We met at the top and really soaked in the views. It is gorgeous up there!

Erik skied off the backside of the couloir toward the tarn, made some turns in windpack, then climbed back up and over into the top of 3:00. I was standing all alone on the top of 3:00 variation, looking down the steep shot below my skis, getting really excited to ski my line! The snow was soft and almost slushy corn, and if there is a type of snow that I really know how to ski, it is corn snow!

I dropped in first, making turns down a steep, beautiful slope with dramatically-striped rock all around me. The line didn't drop directly down fall line, but turned toward skier's left, which made my descent feel even more adventurous!  Eventually my line connected back with 3:00 proper, and I got to stop and take some really great photos of Erik ripping it!

Skiing the rest of the couloir, I enjoyed making huge turns and really let my skis get going. At first, I was doing my own thing, but I somehow ended up following Erik's turns exactly. It's funny how that happens sometimes... it must be love.

Skiing off the mountain was "woo hoo!s" all the way to the snowmobiles. There was definitely a high five or two. Psyched to finally ski 3:00 couloir, and on such a fantastic, sunny, warm, excellent day!