I remember that weekend well. Saturday was sunny and beautiful. I went for a run on the outer edges of Forest Park. Admiring the always stunning sights of Mt Adams, Mt Rainier and Mt Hood, I took in the view of the lenticular clouds forming on the summits of Adams and Rainier and thought "yep, Sunday's storm is coming in right on schedule". I didn't know that my friends Dan and Alice were among a group of climbers up on Mt Hood, beginning an adventure that was a bit more than they had bargained for.

Mt Hood; March 21, 2008

But from their scenic perch in Illumination Saddle on on the south side of the volcano, the Mt Hood 8 had no such view of the foretelling clouds licking the summits of Mt Hood's northern neighbors. They enjoyed a great evening snow-camping, awoke to bad weather and did the right thing: started down. A few degrees off on their compass bearing, three of the climbers, and Velvet, took one wayward, blind step in a white-out and tumbled into White River Canyon.

The search and rescue was successful. The onslaught of media attention was at times entertaining and exciting. But this group decided to do more than just enjoy the ride on the wave of overwhelming media interest. After the Ellen Show appearance, and hits on The Today Show and Good Morning America, they put together a fundraising auction and raised tens of thousands of dollars for local search and rescue groups. I help out as emcee and auctioneer, happy to lend a hand to friends who were doing such a great thing for the climbing community.

Last weekend they commemorated the entire odyssey from Illumination Saddle to The Ellen Show with a weekend back on the mountain, this time in the cozy confines of Silcox Hut. Silcox is like a mini-Timberline lodge, 1,000 feet above the main lodge at the top of the Magic Mile chairlift.

Silcox Hut at night

Celebrating Inside Silcox Hut

The Mt Hood 8 knows how to throw a party! We danced. We ate well, drank well and looked at a slide show of the climb and video highlights and lowlights of the news coverage of the event. But what was more glaring than any camera lights was the comraderie, caring and passion this group shares for its sport, the outdoors, and above all, for each other.

Looking down on the lights of Ski Bowl from Silcox Hut

Since we weren't going down to Ski Bowl, Quinn and I went up.... for a night ski under the full moon above Silcox Hut. We slapped on our climbing skins and skied up the mountain a ways. The picture below was made at 11:45 pm with my Nikon D200, on a 20 second exposure at F13 as we enjoyed the ski down. The snow was great!

Skiing by Headlight and Moonlight above Silcox Hut

What to do with headlights when their not in use: Juggle!

Juggling Headlights

The Mt Hood 8 plus friends and family. Yours truly on the far left.

As we head into spring (if it ever returns) climbing season, have fun and be safe out there. Drop me a line and better yet some pictures of your activities and adventures.

Happy Travels,

Matt Zaffino
KGW Chief Meteorologist
mzaffino@kgw.com

Here's a picture of the provincial courthouse. It's a beautiful turn of the century structure. This picture doesn't do it justice (hey I was in hurry!), and it's even more beautiful when you see it surrounded by huge piles of snow.

Update! I snapped this daylight shot below of the courthouse on the way out of town. Hopefully this gives a little better idea of why I think it's so cool.

Simply put, this is one of the friendliest town's I've ever visited. But there's a charm here that goes beyond small-town friendly.

Downtown Fernie with the ski area's Lizard Bowl in the background.

You can't slide off a chair-lift or step into one of the growing number of great restaurants in town without hearing an Australian or New Zealand accent. Fernie is hugely popular with skiers from down-under. Part of it is because it's easy for fellow common-wealthers to work in Canada. But for this American ear, it adds an international quality to a visit to Fernie that's just fun and interesting.
The Fernie restaurant scene has seen some much-needed additions over the last few years, including Currie Bowl for thai food and an expansive beer list, Yamagoya's for great sushi and The Brick for drinks and solid and creative pub fare.

In spite of the growth, some good some questionable as is usually the case with a developing town, the common denominater here is still the powder.

The ski area is basically a series of bowls that all feed back to two base areas.

I'm cutting some telemark turns in the Fernie powder. The pictures don't show my smile.

The backdrop of the Lizard Range can be distracting from the task at foot.

There's a reason this is called Snow Valley. It's only 40 miles north of Montana so it reaps the snowy benefits of winter storms that often traverse inland south of the border. But it's also only 40 miles west of the Continental Divide, which acts as a barrier to the Arctic air-masses the Canadian Prairies are famous for. The boundary between the cold Arctic air and moisture laden Pacific air can be a very efficient snow-producer. Lisa poses for a picture from Siberia Bowl at Fernie Alpine Resort, high above the town of Fernie.

The town is about 3 miles from Fernie Alpine Resort. You'll still find skiers and boarders hitching rides to the ski hill every morning. People here aren't afraid to give a fellow rider a lift to the lifts.

Downsides? If you're looking for a big apre-ski scene, this may not be your town. Sure, there are a few hot-spot watering holes, but you're nearly as likely to be rubbing elbows at the bar with a coal-miner as you are with a powder-hound. Although in Fernie they're often the same guy. And yes, this is Canada, so hockey rules. One of the most fun things to do on a winter night in Fernie is catch one of the games of the local junior hockey team, the Fernie Ghost-Riders. The team is named after the shadowy image that appears on the face of one of the local mountains every sunny afternoon. The "Ghost-Rider" is as much a part of Fernie's history as fluffy snow and coal. But that's the subject of a future blog, the next time I'm back in my favorite ski-town.

Matt Zaffino
Chief Meteorologist
KGW News Channel 8

What's your favorite ski location? Post a comment, I'd love to hear about it!

Xena catching a frisbee at Bennett Pass SnoPark on Mt Hood

Check out the massive amount of snow in the parking lot at Bennett Pass! Xena, in her eagerness to go ski-joring, bounded almost straight up the snowbank. I made a feeble effort to kick steps in and climb up, before giving up and going around to a low spot farther down the parking lot. I made this picture on February 13. Clearly there's a ton of snow on Mt Hood, but already the snowpack is shrinking. And that's probably a good thing.

On February 8th, there was a massive 140" of snow at Government Camp. I can't recall ever seeing more there. But as of today, February 21, the snowpack is down to 91". That four feet of snow loss is due to settling, melting and sublimation (evaporation of snow). The reason I say the snow loss is a good thing is because the risk of widespread flooding is diminishing. The low elevation snowpack has been huge this winter. Our recent weather pattern has been perfect for a gradual reduction of all that water stored up in the snow.

Xena inspects a clear-cut off Bennett Pass

And there's still plenty of snow at higher elevations for great skiing well into spring. In fact I can hardly wait for the longer days of spring and some great corn snow.

Impressive Cap Cloud on Mt Hood

I made this picture the day before the ski-trip pictured above. The lenticular cloud on top of Mt Hood goes by the casual name of a Cap Cloud, since it looks like a cap on the mountain. These clouds are good indications of strong winds aloft, which can be an indication of an incoming storm. In this case, the storm dropped about 4 inches of snow on Mt Hood for my and Xena's skiing pleasure.

So what's up with the rest of winter? Are we done with stormy weather? Not likely. But it looks like more good opportunities in the next couple weeks to continue my cross-training regime of skiing, running and golf.

What about you? How do you take advantage of our less-stormy weather this time of year? Drop a comment on the blog here and I'll post some of the good ones. That way we can share ideas and maybe come up with more great ways to get out there and have fun!

Happy Trails,
Matt Zaffino
KGW Chief Meteorologist

On New Year's Eve Lisa, Xena and I did a little x-c skiing on a neighbor's Christmas tree farm. I gotta admit, skiing mere minutes from home was pretty cool! Mt Rainier and Mt St Helens loom in the dusky background.

Xena's not as vicious as she looks, she just likes to run! In my experience stop motion photography often catches dogs in Cujo-mode.

Xena's in this shot too. The snowpack is about 18". For an elevation of about 1400 feet, that's not bad! The tree farm owner has lanes cut in his trees, which made for some nice lines.

Sunday, January 6th, South Side of Mt St Helens.

We parked at the Marble Mountain Snow-Park, and headed out on a little tour. A lot of x-c skiers don't like this trailhead because it's heavily used by snow-mobilers. But through the smoke of those two-cycle engines, emerges an opportunity for skiers and snow-mobilers to interact.

And hopefully see that we share something: a desire to get out and enjoy the snow. We just have different methods.

Hey it's not like we have to share (here, anyway) the trails. Can't we all just get along? But that's fodder for future blogs. Back to skiing!

Yes, Xena is wearing booties. Snow tends to ball up between her toes, so she patiently let me strap these suckers on her paws. She threw them off a few times, but I finally got the hang of strapping them on tightly. After a few seconds she forgot about them and they sort of acted like little snow shoes. It was cool to watch her run with them. When I take her backpacking in summer, I always bring her booties, in case she cuts a pad or hurts a foot.

Friends Phil and Gina (Philina) enjoy the heavily falling snow. Gina's a rookie and she did great. See, she's smiling! Phil has more patience than any man alive. Not that he needed it... :)

Danger Zone


Check out the fracture line in the snow. A small avalanche left evidence of the unstable snowpack currently in the Cascades. As I write this, an Avalanche Warning is up for Tuesday for dangerous back-country conditions. This slide was next to the Swift Creek Trail we were on. We weren't in danger at this point, the slope above us was small and had already slid. But a bit higher, the small slope expanded into a bigger one on the right side of a gully that led to where we wanted to go.

Terrain trap! Even though it had mostly slid, I felt it was unsafe to ski because if it slid again, even though the slope was only about 50 yards high, it could release enough snow to bury a skier in the gully. Gully skiing makes me nervous.... I generally avoid it unless I know the snowpack is bomber (very stable). Here's a nice little poem by Mark Moore of the Northwest Avalanche Forecast Center (NWAC), that describes the current snowpack:

Slow down and listen, this ain’t no jive-
You’ve got to ratchet things back to stay alive.
Shooting cracks on the slope, whomps on the ridge-
We’ve got no strong crusts to act as a bridge.
The only crusts we’ve got are faceted and weak-
And loaded by even more snow as we speak.
Settlement is coming but not fast enough-
And it’s hard to focus with all of that fluff.
So whatever your sport, whatever your skill,
Be avalanche aware or else you it will kill.

Moore has done great work at the NWAC for years, and apparently he's quite the poet. I highly recommend you check their avalanche conditions forecast before heading out into the back-country.

Beauty Shot!

I'll end with this.. snow piling on fir trees. Gotta love the Cascades when it dumps like this. And it will all week. See, I'm weather-geeking out already. Thanks for reading my blog, and I'd love to see your comments.

Happy Trails,

Matt Zaffino
KGW Chief Meteorologist

I spent an hour or so out in the crisp cold night making pictures of the lookout tower. This 30 second exposure is one of my favorites. I've skied into fire lookout towers more times than I can remember, but I'm always struck by the stark and stately beauty of these structures against the backdrop of winter. The horizontal line of light on the right is an airplane on final approach to PDX. The orange glow on the left is the lights of Portland. You can see another light-line, angling off from the vertical at the top of the shot. This is either a high-flying airplane or a satellite, but it's cool because I didn't notice it until I was home looking at my pictures.
The Five-Mile Lookout sits on a 30-foot tower and has views of Mt Hood, Mt Adams and Mt Rainier and of course a sweeping view to the east.

Xena mostly ran and I skied in to the tower in the awesome late afternoon light to meet our good friends Terry and Bill. My pack in the background is a lot heavier than Xena's!

Xena carries her food and ski-jore (future blog subject) gear, along with a couple adult beverages in her dogpack. Once it's on her she doesn't even notice it. Hey the girl's gotta carry her own weight! Not literally of course, she only has a few pounds in there.

We got to the tower in time to catch some nice Mt Adams alpenglow. That's Mt Rainier on the left.

Terry and Bill are great back-country cooks. But this is not really that. The lookout has a propane oven and stove, so it's not exactly primitive. And since the early season snowpack is shallow, the ski in was short. So we brought A LOT of supplies!

How about a fondue and fresh crab feast?

I brought the fondue cheese and bread, Terry and Bill hauled in the fresh crab. Yummy!

After scarfing scraps and her dog food, Xena thinks she just might settle in on the bed for a nap.

But she slept on the floor near me. The wood-burning stove was doing a great job of heating up the place, so she occasionally crashed by the door for some heat relief.

In the morning she did a good job of scouring the left-over congealed fondue cheese out of my pot.

And she was all over it when Bill dropped an egg on the cabin floor.

The ski out was a little short for Xena, she would have preferred to keep going!
If you're interested in learning more about Forest Service lookouts available for public use, you can make reservations and find out more at

http://www.recreation.gov

Matt Zaffino
KGW Chief Meteorologist