Part 1 - Mt. Thielsen, OR - 2.14.09
2/15/09
OR elsewhere
4776
4
Friday the 13th, 4:20 pm, and we were rushing through our checklists making sure that we had everything we were going to need for an eight day trip in Oregon (excluding driving days down and back). We finally loaded up and were out, making time to visit some friends for a beer in Portland. A short nap along the way, and we pulled into the Diamond Lake Resort early the next morning to buy our sno-park permit. We arrived at the Thielsen sno-park and clumsily threw our gear together for a rushed ascent up Thielsen. We had planned on being there earlier, but things change, so we decided we could probably make one good lap of it.
We made good time, but the constant monotony of touring through the forests in Oregon can be mentally difficult; tree line for most areas is around 8000'. However, Mt. Thielsen also begins gently and then rapidly arises sharply into the air. As the terrain began to steepen, we knew that views were shortly at hand. The forecast for our week has been anything but consistent, and a lot of the weather predictions have been a wishy-washy 50% good/50% bad, so we don't know til we go. Thielsen held decent weather for us, but as we neared the top, we began to see increasing precipitation and lowering visibility. We concurred with an elderly local who had told us that "Thielsen is WAY to dangerous. You best do your ski thing on Bailey. You can't get to the top." He was right, we weren't going to be doing any 4th class rock scramble up the last summit block of Thielsen, at night and during increasingly bad weather, but we would get a good ski line. And we dropped about 3000' making it back to the car to set up camp for the first night just after dark. Not a bad day for starting at 1:00 pm. 8 miles RT, and lots of good tree skiing or alpine lines to be had...most importantly, POWDER turns. Here's some more pics from Thielsen:
Making our way up Thielsen, Diamond Lake and Bailey in the distance.
First views of the summit block...
Getting ready to drop
More to come...
We made good time, but the constant monotony of touring through the forests in Oregon can be mentally difficult; tree line for most areas is around 8000'. However, Mt. Thielsen also begins gently and then rapidly arises sharply into the air. As the terrain began to steepen, we knew that views were shortly at hand. The forecast for our week has been anything but consistent, and a lot of the weather predictions have been a wishy-washy 50% good/50% bad, so we don't know til we go. Thielsen held decent weather for us, but as we neared the top, we began to see increasing precipitation and lowering visibility. We concurred with an elderly local who had told us that "Thielsen is WAY to dangerous. You best do your ski thing on Bailey. You can't get to the top." He was right, we weren't going to be doing any 4th class rock scramble up the last summit block of Thielsen, at night and during increasingly bad weather, but we would get a good ski line. And we dropped about 3000' making it back to the car to set up camp for the first night just after dark. Not a bad day for starting at 1:00 pm. 8 miles RT, and lots of good tree skiing or alpine lines to be had...most importantly, POWDER turns. Here's some more pics from Thielsen:
Making our way up Thielsen, Diamond Lake and Bailey in the distance.
First views of the summit block...
Getting ready to drop
More to come...
awesome! looks like you guys found the goods.
Good job guys, that has to be a long haul in there through the woods!
It was a good start, but definitely not as much skinning as the rest of our trip...
Late Start. Way to get in there anyway!!!!!! Sounds like the pow was good!!!!! I've only done T in corn but have thought how cool it must be in pow including the lower mountain as the archetecture is so lovely!
Thanks for the TR......
Thanks for the TR......
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