Play: Where else can you ski off a volcano, blast down a snow tunnel or snowshoe with beer?
Explore the snowy peak of Mount Bachelor
BEND, OREGON >> Just west of Bend lies the spectacular stratovolcano complex that includes craggy Broken Top, the Three Sisters and most notably for snow sports enthusiasts, 9,068-foot Mount Bachelor.
This ski area, which sits astride a beautiful, conicalshaped mountain, is a rarity. Take the high-speed Summit chair ride to the top, and skiers and snowboarders get not only panoramic views of near-limitless landscapes, but a 360-degree choice of snowy ways to descend.
There’s a lot of shredding to ponder here with 4,300 skiable acres, several terrain parks, a 3,365-foot vertical drop and eight high-speed quads, four fixed-grip chairs and some surface lifts. Most of the routes down from the summit are double-black, requiring advanced to expert skills to tackle every manner of ungroomed steeps and whoop-de-dos.
Conditions can vary from light, dry Cascade powder to wind-blown slabs, crust and boilerplate. Wide-open bowls give way to endless
glades and narrow trails. Catch-line trails and crossovers funnel you back to the lifts from all points within. It’s an expert’s dream.
But fear not, intermediates! From the summit you can schuss down a number of runs, among them Beverly Hills and Wanoga Way, down to the newest runs off the Cloudchaser quad. The whole area is a blue-square paradise.
Sunrise and Skyliner Express chairs access loads of intermediate and beginner trails, culminating at the Sunrise Lodge. And Bachelor is introducing three new lifts and additional ski acreage attached to its Woodward Mountain Park beginner area. Woodward incorporates zones that focus on learning, familycentered activities, proficiency and skiing level training, all included in your ski pass.
Mountain bites and trails
From the area’s main base, the classic Pine Marten Express not only opens up a range of trails, from green to black, and leads you to the halfpipe and race area, it also introduces you to the midmountain Pine Marten Lodge where you can grab food and drinks inside.
For great, sustained pitch runs with fewer crowds, take that express to the Outback and the Northwest, both serviced by highspeed quads of the same name. Northwest, with a whopping 2,356 feet of vertical rise, tends to black runs and Outback to blue runs, but your legs will be burning soon enough on either.
And the power of some of the snowstorms hitting the volcano are evident here and on the summit, with ice-blasted trees looking like ghosts and lift buildings resembling Antarctic weather stations.
Other adventures
Looking for other ways to play on the mountain? There’s a Nordic center with a network of groomed trails that boasts one of the longest seasons in North America, from mid-november to the end of May and sometimes into June.
Take a daredevil plunge down the tubing park or opt for a snowshoe tour. Bend’s Wanderlust Tours offers a variety of excursions in Central Oregon, including canoe trips, brewery hops and cave adventures — and winter snowshoe trips to Bachelor.
Guide Erika Nuetzel led us on a snowshoe trek across the ski slopes and into the forest of hemlock and lodgepole pine. We didn’t just take in the views, we learned all sorts of things — that you can make tea with lodgepole needles, and that the subnivean zone — the area between ground and snowpack — is where mice and voles live to avoid both cold and predators. She pointed out the predators’ tracks in the snow, Pine Marten and Sierra Nevada red foxes, the latter curiously more prevalent here than in the California mountains. And we learned the finer points of lichens growing on tree bark, from bear fur and witch’s hair to the toxic-formammals wolf lichen.
A couple of hours of climbing, sliding and sloshing, with an occasional soft tumble, and we were back at the van drinking hot cocoa, very satisfied with the adventure — and much smarter than before.