Ben and David's Skiing Adventure
While my brother David was home from school for winter
break, we headed up to Mount Hood to ski at Mt.
Hood Meadows, one of the ski areas on the mountain. David skis
on a somewhat irregular basis, and even owns his own equipment. I
on the other hand had not been skiing in twelve years, though I did go
snowboarding
with Trish a couple years ago.
We got up to the ski area around 10am, and the parking
lot was full, so we were diverted to Hood River Meadows, the lower parking
area for the resort. From there, we took the lift up to the main
ski area:
From the top, the view was breathtaking. Above
David's head (right), Mount Jefferson can be seen:
The skiing was somewhat poor, as it was above freezing,
so the snow was slushy in the sun and icy in the shade. As we skied
throughout the day, I took lots of pictures, much to David's dismay.
He wanted to focus on the skiing!
In the next picture, Mount Jefferson is in on the right,
and the Three Sisters are on the left, almost lost in the haze:
Here's a panorama from the top of the highest lift:
We skied and skied and skied. We did mostly "blue square"
runs. David would cruise ahead and I would come down much more slowly.
By 4pm, we were pretty tired, and our lift tickets were about to expire.
Our last run was from the highest point on the mountain all the way down
to the Hood River Meadows parking lot, at the very bottom of the resort.
As the sun set, I saw some fog hanging in a low valley, and a beautiful
sunset with Mount Jefferson in the background:
While I wiped out quite a few times, my most severe
wipeout was on the very last run, on the way down to the parking lot.
David, on the other hand, was quite the speed demon, and at one point went
speeding over a rise with a blind drop-off. As he crashed through
three bamboo poles and became tangled in sixty feet of barrier line, he
realized he had crossed out of the ski run and into a snowboard stunt area.
He had a really surprised look on his face!
Overall, we had a really good time. We got home
at about 7pm. I was a little stiff the next morning, but it was really
worth it. Hopefully we'll go again soon.
