Dec 31, 2012, Broken Top, Or

A group of us were down in the Bend area for new years and looking for some good touring.  I've had Broken Top on my tick-list for quite some time, but had heard that it had a pretty long approach so wasn't sure if we could pull it off in a day.  We decided to go ahead with it anyway. 

We parked at the Bachelor Nordic center and left the cars at 8 am and made quick time on the nordic trails and old skin track up to Todd lake rim.  From there we broke trail to the Broken top Basin, which was flat and relatively easy.  We eventually caught up with a skin track from Ball Butte and were headed to Pucker up on the SW ridge.  The skin up was on wind effected breakable crust so we bailed on that and headed towards the SE side where we could ski a SW facing slope.  Made our way to the rim and found a great line down.  The snow on this side was considerably better and made for a fantastic line.   Saw two other groups who had some sled assistance to get in.  We ultimately reached the rim by around 12:30 or so.   We were able to glide out a good ways, but had to re-skin for a short bit to Todd lake.  Skied down and across Todd lake and then re-skinned for the last 2 miles of nordic trail and made it to the cars by 3:30.   All in all it was a long but very reasonable 1 day ski tour.  It sure would be nice to have more energy and ski additional lines in the bowl.  There are some really great looking routes on that mountain.