November 28, 2008, Mt Thielsen area

Brenda and I made our annual trip to my folks in Roseburg for Thanksgiving Weekend. We usually have  pretty good luck finding some snow, but this year we took our hiking boots just in case. Web cam showed a bit of snow along hwy 138 near Diamond Lake, and  lots of white on  Mt Bailey in the distance. In any case, the drive up made it obvious that things would be very bony. Luck would  have it that the lack of snow allowed us to drive the 5 miles of dirt to the Tipsoo Pk trailhead at 6400€™. Our front wheel drive Toyota just barely cleared the center of the track, and chains were only required when I got us stuck trying to turn around at the end.

Not a lot of snow, but anytime we can skin from the car it€™s a good day. The  meadows around the saddle between Tipsoo Pk and Howlock Mtn are very grassy, so I was sure we could get a few very low angle turns there. We skinned to just below the summit of Tipsoo at 8000€™ to check out the coverage in its north facing bowl. We did one 500€™ run with very tentative turns and called it good. Decent powder, but way too many hidden rocks. We climbed out then  messed  around  in the meadows for a while before skiing  back to the car. The ground in the lodgepole and mtn hemlock forest is very soft, not a lot of sticks and small pumicy, so we were actually skiing back on 1€ of snow without tearing up our skis. Probably 6-8€ above the tree line in the meadows though.

All in all it was a good day. Only one very short shoulder carry and we didn€™t get skunked for turns. But please let it snow.