When the snow won’t come to us, we’ll go to the snow.
As lovers of all things snow, we get a little bummed out that snow isn’t the winter norm here in Portland. Luckily, we can find plenty of it on Mount Hood. It’s been really fun to watch the snow pile up on the mountain (you can see it on a clear day in Portland), and we’ve been itching to go play in it for months.
Now, a little background info on my skiing experience: I’ve done a lot of skiing on the hills of southern Indiana. Back in my high school days in Kentucky, I was even in the ski club. Fast forward 5 years, when we moved to Oregon, where people ski on REAL MOUNTAINS, and it’s like I’ve never strapped a ski on in my life. It’s completely different.
Last winter, we went on our first real skiing adventure at Mount Bachelor. It was equal parts awesome and terrifying. Mountains are big, folks.
Now that we live much closer to Mount Hood, we decided to try skiing at Mount Hood Meadows. It was as beautiful as you’d imagine a snow-covered mountain to be. But windy. So, so, windy. At one point, the wind was blowing me back uphill. It was that insane. We took the Vista Express ski lift up to 6,571 feet, which was kind of terrifying in 30 mph winds. The views from up there were pretty amazing though.
I should point out that there’s absolutely no daredevil in this girl, so skiing on a real mountain is kind of a test of my bravery. It turns out I’m not very brave. And that means that Eric spent a lot of his ski day waiting at the bottom of the hill while I inched my way down, moving out of the way for the tiny children who were apparently born without fear. But, despite a few mild panic attacks on my end, it was a pretty fun day.
The bummer about Mount Hood Meadows is that there aren’t that many beginner runs (and when you’ve only been skiing twice in the past 6 years, you need lots of easy runs). And the ones they do have are still full of pretty darn steep hills. So, if you’re a newbie to skiing on real mountains, I’d recommend trying Mount Bachelor instead.
Here’s to many more winter adventures in our future!
-Ally
mary m says
Meadows was where I learned to ski (a good 25 years ago….) and I think they had more beginner runs back then. I’m not sure if Timberline would be a better bet? Ski bowl can be fun, as can Hoodoo. Looks like you chose the perfect day to go 🙂
Ally says
It was a gorgeous day, for sure! We’ll have to try out some other ski resorts this winter! Although I’m hoping we’ll get some real snow in Portland, so we can just play in the snow here!
mary m says
I’m down in Salem and I’m keeping my fingers crossed we might have an awesome snow storm like last year. But that only seems to happen about once every 5-6 years? But this year we haven’t had any (have we? I can’t remember, so that tells me we haven’t…LOL).
Ally says
I’m hoping last year’s snow becomes a regular thing. No snow yet this year, and it looks like we’ll be in the 50’s for the next week or so. Maybe if we both wish hard enough for snow, it’ll happen!