The days in November were starting to slip away, and I needed to get some turns in. The weather forecast was calling for sun on Friday, so I headed out solo since both Dan and Joe had skied the week before while I was stuck at work. The drive up I5 went smoothly, and I soon found myself cruising up Highway 26 with Mt Hood poking through the clouds…
A few minutes later, I pulled into the climber’s lot at Timberline and was the only car there until a friendly hiker pulled up while I was organizing my gear. The mountain was looking pretty, with a thin coat of new snow still remaining from the previous week’s storm.
Once my boards were strapped to the pack, it was time to set out on the road up to Silcox. I stopped at the usual spot to snap a picture of the mountain, and then continued on up. The road had a few inches of snow on it, but I booted for a quarter mile or so before switching to skins.
I made good time up to Silcox, and was happy to have been able to skin the entire way. After working my way over a few bands of rocks, I was out onto the Palmer. The Palmer looked similar to when Dan, Joe and I had skied it in October, but had definitely melted down since then. I stopped for a couple of minutes at the top to eat a snack and snap a few pictures.
The new snow from the previous week looked pretty skiable above the Palmer, but there was a heavy cloud layer flirting around 9500 feet. I decided to head up, not wanting to pass on the opportunity to ski some wild snow above the area boundary. As I skinned up, the clouds below continued to creep up the mountain, ultimately engulfing the bottom of the Palmer lift.
The snow on the southeastern exposure was starting to corn nicely, so I climbed up to about 9000 feet and decided to call it there, given the dense clouds above me and the fact that the coverage above was pretty sparse. I pulled the tripod out of my pack, snapped a few shots of myself with the remote timer, and then hung out in the sun and enjoyed a beer I’d brought with me.
I scrambled across a few rocks and got a good view of Illumination Rock and out towards the Zigzag Glacier, where some pretty fun summer turns were had a few months earlier. The skiing looked decent out that way, but given the aspect and the likelihood that the snow would be firm, I decided to pass and ski down the way I came up.
Being solo, I didn’t get any action shots on the ski down, but the turns were pretty fun. The snow above the Palmer was excellent corn, as was the first half of the Palmer. From the mid-station down, I had to ski in the dense clouds, which was quite a contrast to the sunny slopes between 8000 and 9000 feet. After the Palmer, I was able to link snow fingers down to Silcox, and then ski the road to within a couple hundred vertical of the parking lot. Once I was back at the car, I hung out for a little bit to enjoy some late season chips and garden salsa before heading home.
All things considered, it was a pretty great November ski, and worth taking the day off work. Now however, it’s time for the powder to fly…..:)
