November 4, 2007, White River Snowfield (Mt Hood)

With Loofus sleeping it off (at least that's my suspiscion after the big duck game) I headed up to Timberline solo for some early November turns.  I was suprised at how much snow had melted from a few weeks ago.  I ended up buying a 5 point flex pass for $109.  I used 1 point yesterday and rode the Palmer chair about 10 times before deciding to hike up towards Crater Rock for some additional turns.

The snow on the lower WR snowfield was pretty suncupped, but the upper snowfield was perfect corn.  Suprisingly, I had the place pretty much to myself, aside from a few climbers.  After climbing about 1200 feet, I decided to turn around as the snow started petering out around 9800 feet.  The snow above near the Hogsback was intermittent and crusty at best.  The ride down was great, with the upper pitch worth the hike.  The snowfield should be in decent shape as long as the sun is out.  Hopefully a large storm moves in soon and pukes all over the whole mountain and we can get on with winter!!!

All in all, it wasn't a bad way to get my 24th month - about 15,000 vertical lift served and 1,200 vertical backcountry.  A few pics of the outing are below (note you can see the upper palmer in the middle of the first picture on the extreme right).