December 12, 2004, Mt. Hood Meadows (still closed)

Meadows had promised opening this weekend but on Saturday morning cancelled courtesy of Thursday and Friday's "liquid sunshine" event. Based on telemetry, this copious "liquid sunshine" caused the snowdepth to recede by about 10"s. Ullr must have grown partially tired of our bawling as Saturday night the temperature dropped and 2-4"s (beggars can't be choosers) of actual *snow* was deposited (and subsequently wind pummeled) on Mt Hood.

Arriving at 8 the sky was overcast with high clouds but we could still see the top of the WyEast face. There were strong winds coming from the--surprise--east/northeast*. We skinned up towards the top of Cascade staying in-between the actual lift and Vista ridge. About 1/4 from the top of Cascade we de-skined and skied towards the top of Hood Express with tentative plans for heading in the vicinity of Shooting Star. East facing aspects were heavily wind eroded exposing impressively sized "runnels" (I'm not going to use the term "drainage channels"--that sounds too much like a euphemism). The runnels were quite interesting. We decided to forgo Shooting Star since most slopes in that area were east facing; instead we headed down a run to skier's left of Hood Express. The snow here was relatively good, a few inches of fresh sheltered from the wind--although in places it was a bit slabby. About halfway down we skinned back to the top of Hood Express for another lap.

Andy in the good snow: