Yesterday promised to be a somewhat sunny day so we thought we’d have a go at the Oregon Skiing. We’d done a very unscientific survey (Christine had asked a few people) of ski fields, there are a couple within approx 2 hr drive but settled on Hoodoo, a mountain in the cascades up highway 22 from Salem.
We did a little research the night before and learned that the neighboring mountain looks like what we (with some experience of the southwest) would call a Mesa. Hoodoo is a pointy mountain and apparently the names were swapped on a map because the neighboring mountain is called ‘hayrick’.
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| From Skiing at Hoodoo OR |
We got up early and left here by about 6:30am and got there in plenty of time to park virtually next to the lodge. We signed the elder kids and Richard up for lessons and rented (tried to ‘hire’ it, they thought I was talking about ‘hiking’) the required equipment.
Richard, Liam and Madeline all spend the morning learning to ski, Madeline for the first time. Student to teacher ratio was very low; some had more than one instructor. Lucky we didn’t pay for private lessons!
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| From Skiing at Hoodoo OR |
The weather wasn’t great, cold with light snow but we had plenty of gear to keep warm. Lunch was provided as part of the lessons for the kids and Izabel borrowed some ski boots to have play in the snow at lunch time (even the smallest boots were about twice too big).
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| From Skiing at Hoodoo OR |
The afternoon was spent with more skiing while Christine and Izabel enjoyed the après ski facilities in the ski lodge. Lessons stopped at 3, Madeline was stuffed, Liam and Richard did one run before he was done too, and Richard appeared to all but have the mountain alone.
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| From Skiing at Hoodoo OR |
We came home a slightly different route but found it much longer, still it appears we’ve proven that it’s fairly easy to go skiing for the day from here and we hope to do it again after our annual migration to the south.
