Skiing In the Central Oregon Outback

The time was finally right for an excursion above treeline into the Central Oregon Cascades. Even office workers need to get out sometimes, and Carlos and I elected to shine our office duties in favor of sunny skies and great snow. We decided our objective to the NE Ridge of Broken Hand, a feature just to the east of our much-beloved Broken Top. Below is Carlos heading out with Broken Top in the background.
Here he is at the east col of Broken Hand, enjoying the view to the north of Middle and North Sister.


Then...things got a bit more serious with some technical climbing to gain the summit of Broken Hand. The NE ridge has some rock climbing and some steep snow. A great objective for ski mountaineers.



Straddling the ridge up high, we both felt the exposure.


Carlos is pretty excited on the summit. His first technical climb with his splitboard on his back.

We were rewarded with over 1000 feet vertical of beautiful turns down into the upper part of the Snowcreek drainage.


After that run, we skinned up to Point 8378, and skied its huge north face. What a great run!

Turns Out: Ski Season is Here Already

As it turns out, ski season is, in fact, here in Oregon.

I had my suspicions based on last week's excursions, and in our seemingly endless quest to become better snow scientists, myself, Pete and Gabe made time on yesterday's tour to make some turns and both the turns and the tests confirm: Yup - It's time for skiing. 1.5m+ snowpacks, 40-50cms of fluffy new powder on N and E aspects, little by way of reactive slab activity* and plenty of creamy untracked pow, as I believe they call it in the 'Rado - sounds like ski season to me. Our photographic haul was pretty weak owing to the fact that the only cameras we had with us were iPhones, but even a cell phone camera can tell you that those are powder turns. Viva Noviembre!



*For more pics and test scores check out Now! Climbing here.