I'm on my way to Yakima, WA, staying with friends 3 nights. Liz flies in there late tonight to resume the ski road trip through Iron Blosam Week.
I drove 675 miles to Yreka Friday, which left me 40 minutes from Mt. Ashland (area #244) for Saturday morning. The weather was more of what we experienced in Utah and Idaho: heavy fog with some on and off snow.
I again experienced the Saturday crush common at local ski areas in 2020-21. I arrived at 9:02AM to a parking lot at least 3/4 full. The Windsor and Ariel lifts are old doubles that ran 5+ minute lift lines all day. Locals said this was as busy as it ever gets there. There was a dip around lunch hour but a couple of times the Ariel line was 10 minutes.
While the weather may not have been good, there was nothing to complain about for snow conditions. It was soft packed powder everywhere. Early on I had trouble distinguishing between groomed and ungroomed snow in the fog.
But the reality was that ungroomed snow never really got into the mogul stage, evidence that it's quiet midweek, and even on the weekends skier density is low, constrained by lift capacity.
The main chairs ascend consistent fall lines, Windsor maybe 700 vertical and Ariel about 1,000. Ariel packs a lot of terrain diversity into 1,000 vertical, rivaling Baldy's Thunder Mt. in that department. Notable at the top of Ariel looker's right is The Bowl, fed by 4 chutes that are legit steep at 35-40 degrees for maybe 300 vertical.
Sometimes the visibility was too bad to be venturing there but I eventually skied all 4 chutes. Here's an overview when visibility was decent enough to ski there.
Zoom of skier in chute:
After 1PM the sunny breaks got clearer. I'm on top of chutes 3 and 4 looking back to the bowl and top of Ariel lift.
Looking down from same spot:
Chute 4 is at left and part of the wider chute 3 is at right.
Skier's left of Ariel has good tree spacing.
This was Coolwater. The Moraine glades below the bowl are nicely spaced too but the vertical is very short before you hit the boundary traverse leading back to Ariel.
Not on the map is the backside, a wide open area very lightly tracked even though there were plenty of locals enjoying it.
From there a road leads to the far end of the parking lot, which is why I only skied that on my final run.
I finished with 15,000 vertical at 2:15 because I had a 4 hour drive to Bend to meet my high school classmate Kirk for dinner. FYI that dinner was outdoors under space heaters at 34F. I wore Sorel Boots, base layers, kept my jacket zipped and was comfortable. I did not feel I needed hat or gloves.
I drove 675 miles to Yreka Friday, which left me 40 minutes from Mt. Ashland (area #244) for Saturday morning. The weather was more of what we experienced in Utah and Idaho: heavy fog with some on and off snow.
I again experienced the Saturday crush common at local ski areas in 2020-21. I arrived at 9:02AM to a parking lot at least 3/4 full. The Windsor and Ariel lifts are old doubles that ran 5+ minute lift lines all day. Locals said this was as busy as it ever gets there. There was a dip around lunch hour but a couple of times the Ariel line was 10 minutes.
While the weather may not have been good, there was nothing to complain about for snow conditions. It was soft packed powder everywhere. Early on I had trouble distinguishing between groomed and ungroomed snow in the fog.
But the reality was that ungroomed snow never really got into the mogul stage, evidence that it's quiet midweek, and even on the weekends skier density is low, constrained by lift capacity.
The main chairs ascend consistent fall lines, Windsor maybe 700 vertical and Ariel about 1,000. Ariel packs a lot of terrain diversity into 1,000 vertical, rivaling Baldy's Thunder Mt. in that department. Notable at the top of Ariel looker's right is The Bowl, fed by 4 chutes that are legit steep at 35-40 degrees for maybe 300 vertical.
Sometimes the visibility was too bad to be venturing there but I eventually skied all 4 chutes. Here's an overview when visibility was decent enough to ski there.
Zoom of skier in chute:
After 1PM the sunny breaks got clearer. I'm on top of chutes 3 and 4 looking back to the bowl and top of Ariel lift.
Looking down from same spot:
Chute 4 is at left and part of the wider chute 3 is at right.
Skier's left of Ariel has good tree spacing.
This was Coolwater. The Moraine glades below the bowl are nicely spaced too but the vertical is very short before you hit the boundary traverse leading back to Ariel.
Not on the map is the backside, a wide open area very lightly tracked even though there were plenty of locals enjoying it.
From there a road leads to the far end of the parking lot, which is why I only skied that on my final run.
I finished with 15,000 vertical at 2:15 because I had a 4 hour drive to Bend to meet my high school classmate Kirk for dinner. FYI that dinner was outdoors under space heaters at 34F. I wore Sorel Boots, base layers, kept my jacket zipped and was comfortable. I did not feel I needed hat or gloves.