Feb. 15, 1968
It just isn’t nice when people lose their temper and say such nasty things about the poor weather man when that harassed individual, I’m sure, does his honest utmost to furnish us with his best guesses concerning what may be in store for us weather-wise.
Still it’s hard to blame the half-frantic ski resort owners, who depend on a good snowy winter for their bacon and beans, for blowing their stacks when instead of having their big rush orders for snow taken care of at once, they receive a few measly samples instead. They feel that in mid-January they have a right to expect some snow.
Those ski-buff traps cost a packet to create and maintain, and the only way the owners can get their dough back and keep a healthy stream of profits rolling in is to keep their hands in the ski-happy customers’ pockets up to their elbows. In order to do that they first have to lure the customers up their private mountains, and the answer to that one is SNOW – lots of good dry snow.
At still higher elevations and farther away in the big mountain ranges the slopes are plentifully slathered with beautiful deep snow. But the ski resorts that winter sometimes plays tricks on can’t just pack up and go where the good snow is.
And right there is where the delightful pastime of ski-touring comes into its own. You don’t need special slopes and lifts for cross-country, or tour skiing – or family skiing as it’s sometimes called. And you don’t need the expensive gear necessary for alpine, or downhill skiing; nor the fancy raiment you feel you must be decked out in when you make your appearance on the slopes in order to keep up with the Jones girls. You can buy a complete ski-touring outfit – skis, poles, boots, and the whole shebang – for less than you would pay for a pair of top-hole alpine ski boots.
When you’ve got your nice new touring outfit you wait impatiently for the following weekend to come. Then, having been filled in with details of the plot, you join the gang early Sunday morning, proudly rack your new skis and poles on top of one of the cars with the others, toss your little pack containing camera, waxes, and lunch aboard and away you goup into the mountains or away back into the un-beat-up countryside to where the road finally plunges into a deep snowbank and – for all practical purposes – ends.
Here is where your planned ski tour begins, and the family-like gang is soon gliding happily and leisurely away over the deep snow. If it’s your first time on skis, unless you’re some kind of prodigy, you’re going to take a few tumbles before you find yourself able to keep the same end up more or less constantly. But, unlike the possibility on a crowded, packed ski slope, the danger of getting hurt on your ski tour is practically nil.
Last Sunday we (about 10 of us) went up to Crater Lake for our ski fun. Because of its high elevation and beautiful setting this is a favorite site for ski touring. In spite of the altitude and lateness of the season the snow was wet in some areas and not too deep in places. But by using the fiendishly sticky klister wax we could laugh at the wet snow, and our outing was one of health-packed fun – just as we knew it would be.
From road’s-end, near the lodge, we skied around the Rim, a few of us going as far as the North Entrance, where the road from Diamond Lake way joins the rim road, a round-trip of eleven miles. One girl who was on her first ski tour (but with downhill experience) went with us the whole way.
For our experienced and hardy tourers we’ve some dillies planned for later, one into Green Lake, somewhere between Bend and the Three-sisters; and one over McKenzie Pass and down the east side of the Cascade divide.
If you pine for quick blood-tingling thrills, or yearn to mingle with the flashy multitudes at the fashionable ski resorts, then (if your budget can stand the pressure) by all means head for the slopes. But if the thought of rambling over the hills and through the woods and around the lakes with a small intimate group of cross-country skiers appeals to you, then pack a lunch, gather up your gear and come along with usfor the sort of outing that will give you a healthy glow that will last till ski time comes again.
