Tuesday, March 11, 2008

Not much to talk about...

Sorry I've been so silent lately... it's just that the weather pattern has been so benign and uninteresting lately. I've been too busy to make it up the mountain much as well. The last time I was up there (two weeks ago), however, it was pretty dead. Without significant new snow, the crowd has been very thin on the weekdays. I heard the weekend of 3/1-3/2 was very busy though.

It looks like we'll get a good burst of new snow later this week. Maybe 1-2 feet if all goes well. I'm talking about Thursday-Saturday. The snow level should be pretty low too... 2,000-3,000 feet. That's pretty low for this time of year.

Each of the three Mt. Hood ski areas is now offering unlimited spring passes for sale. The prices:
- Skibowl $88.00 -- good for unlimited visits until closing day (mid-April?)
- Timberline $99.00 -- good for unlimited visits through the end of May
- Meadows $119.00 -- good for unlimited visits until closing day (April 27 for daily operation, weekends only as part of the May Challenge)

The new trend is for the ski areas of offer good deals on end-of-the-season passes instead of discounting daily lift tickets. Timberline typically has dropped their spring daily rates into the $30-40 range -- we'll see if they do that again this year. And Skibowl & Meadows have offered free lift tickets on closing day in the past as well.

Within the next couple weeks, Timberline should be prepping the Palmer lift for its seasonal opening. We're entering my favorite time of year to ski at Timberline -- when the Palmer lift opens and the full 3,800 vertical feet of mountain is available to ski. It's a thigh-burner going from top to bottom!

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Just imagine if they ever get the gondola up from gov'y. It'll be on par with a Blackcomb Glacier to village top to bottom. Hopefully I won't be too broke when they get that installed.

Anonymous said...

Drew - Is it over for the season? It felt like winter left and spring arrived at 11 am yesterday at Meadows.

Anonymous said...

Hey Drew, not sure if you are still checking back in with this blog lately. I was just wondering if you've given any thought to the upcoming ski season and what history indicates as far as weather is concerned for this upcoming winter. I doubt that we can expect the epic snow accumulation that we saw last ski season given the fact that it was a La Nina winter. But, do you think we'll see decent snow this season, or do you think it will be a 'drier' winter?

Anonymous said...

Drew - I was disappointed that you abandoned us in March. Are you going to be doing the blog again this year? I'm interested any time you want to do a long-range forecast on this winter. Are we going to have another La Nina year?