View of the Three Sisters and Broken Top from the top of the Outback Chair at Mt Bachelor.
For Christmas Santa brought our family three days and three nights in Central Oregon. We stayed at the Inn of the Seventh Mountain located between Bend and Mt Bachelor. The Inn offers ice skating, a restaurant, snack bar, stables, and year round swimming / hot tubs. The well heated pool stays nice and warm even when the temperature drops below freezing; it sure was a cold trip from the pool to the hot tubs. The weather for our trip was great. During the day, it was about 30 degrees warmer than average for January. At the ski hill it seemed more like March than January.
We arrived Friday night, lit the fireplace and had a nice peaceful evening in the condo. Saturday we maintained our pace by sleeping in and making it into town for all you can eat pancakes by noon. Saturday afternoon we ice skated and as the sun set we hit the pool. Rachel had never ice-staked before, when we were done she looked like a pro. Megan is a great skater and was showing off for the cute boys. For dinner we "dressed up" and went back into Bend. We ate at one of my two favorite restaurants, Honkers (not to be confused with Hooters). Its an ambitious restoration of a closed down sawmill along a old log pond area in the Deschutes river. Lots of geese congregate in the area, hence the name Honkers. The food and service are fantastic. One of the things I love about Bend is the casual atmosphere. I counted four guys, myself included, wearing baseball caps in a restaurant that serves $18-$28 entrees. After dinner we soaked in the hot tubs again and called it a night.
Late Sunday morning we made it up to Mt Bachelor. With such great weather we weren't the only ones to decide to go to the mountain. The parking lot was about as full as I've seen it in the last 20 years. The mountain recently opened a new tubing park where riders get towed to the top. I can't tell you how many times I've had to drag Rachel to the top of a sledding hill and we were pretty excited about a tow rope to the top. They were so busy that it was taking an hour to make a round trip. I was going to snowboard. After you get away from the main lodge, Mt Bachelor spreads skiers out pretty well. So I wasn't too worried about lift lines, but it was going to be crowded. We had a quick family meeting. The third day of our trip was the Martin Luther King Holiday, the kids didn't have school and Charla and I took the day off. We promised each other we would get up early Monday and be at the mountain when it opened. We all smiled and left.
Since Rachel could speak, she has been telling Charla and I that she "wants to ride a big horse all by herself". I've led several ponies though fields over the years, but this just doesn't satisfy the "all by herself" thing. I'd read the brochure at the Inn and by their rules Rachel was both big and old enough to go on their trail rides. As soon as we got back to the Inn, we went to the stables and luckily scored the last four openings on the last trail ride of the day. Rachel was beside herself. They put her on the perfect horse. She was the calmest, sweetest, oldest horse I've ever seen. The biggest risk to Rachel riding this horse would be if it fell to the ground dying of natural causes. The ride was an hour and a half tour of the trails along the Deschutes river. It was lots of fun and we forgot about the crowds at the mountain. For dinner we went to my other favorite place to eat in Bend, the Deschutes Brewery. Its a textbook example of a successful NW Brew Pub. Always good food, drink and fun.
We kept our promise and Monday morning made it to the mountain as they just started to let people on the lifts. The sunny weather held for the third day of our trip and the parking lot was empty. For all practical purposes we had the whole mountain to ourselves. The girls could make 5-6 tubing runs in an hour which was limited only by the speed of the tow rope. Charla even got into the tubing before finding a nice sunny spot on the outdoor deck at the bar. The mountain has twelve chairlifts, one chair that goes clear to the top. It runs up to 9000 feet, about 1700 feet above the tree line. From the summit chair you can hike to the top of the mountain at 9065 feet. I hiked to the top and boarded down the north side of the mountain. The total run is about 1.5 miles and a little over 2600 vertical feet. The run is fun; the best part was I didn't see another skier or snowboarder until I was within a couple hundred yards of the chair loading area at the bottom. We definitely picked the right day to go.
