OreGONE (Part 2): Lava & Snow!

From Southern Oregon, we drove past  Crater Lake to the Northern part of the state or "High Desert" area of Bend, which is an outdoor enthusiast's heaven.

Despite warm-ish outdoor temperatures in the 50s, there was still a ton of snow on the roadside (and snow still covers many of the forest roads like to Crater Lake).

View of Mt. Thielsen

South of Bend, we wanted to go hiking around Paulina Lake (crater), which is part of Newberry Volcanic National Monument, but its road is still closed due to the "winter season," which (due to snow!) goes until something like May here!

We instead visited the Lava Cast Forest, where molten lava left tree "shells." We did have to hike through a bit of snow to get to the main trail (we'd also visited this forest with Pepper in 2012). 

We stopped near Lava Butte but as the Visitors' Center was closed, we didn't head up to the top of the Cinder Cone and instead took the Trail of the Molten Land.

We had nice view of the Cascades (including the Three Sisters)

(The sign at the top suggested taking a photo now and comparing it in five or ten years to see how the glaciers have melted).

On Friday, we drove 30 minutes west of Bend to ski at Mt. Bachelor, a 9000-ft peak in the Cascades Range.  I had been there twice before-- in May 2014 and also in February 2012.  While I'm still a very intermediate skiier, I've been to many resorts including in West Virginia, Utah, Lake Tahoe, and a few spots in Nor Cal/Southern OR (Mt. Shasta, Mt. Ashland), but this is definitely my favorite mountain of all. It has multiple lifts, and many loooong (up to 2-mile long!) blue runs, which is just perfect for the level of skiier I am. Due to having Pepper with us in the past (and for reasons neither of us can remember), Kelvin hadn't joined me on our other skiing days here (he's a snowboarder, and has come to it later in life and doesn't enjoy it as much as I do), but did today (for at least a few hours). Its COVID policies included kiosks dispensing RFID cards, universal masking on lift lines and the lift, and it all felt very safe. We have our own gear so were able to just drive up, park, and hop on the lift. We also packed our own lunch and snacks.

While the summit was windy, we had lovely weather (35-40 degrees), sun, and, while the morning seemed busier, there weren't too many people for a ski day (being a weekday likely helped). In the oddest of coincidences, we even ran into one of our Arcata colleagues at one of the lift bases! 

After a few hours, Kelvin decided to give his ("nearly forty!") legs a break, while I continued on a few more runs, including from the Cloudchaser lift which ended up being my favorite.  Skiing is hard work and my legs and knees were really feeling it by mid-afternoon, but as we do it so infrequently (I thought it had been almost ten years but my pocket lift stub reminded me I'd last skied at Big Bear in 2015) and especially as it's very tricky to arrange since having kids (I don't really see my kids liking skiing or having enough exposure in the near future to become confident), our mountain day really was a treat!