Bend Blogs » Mt. Bachelor Blog

Here's an email from local grom mom Rebekah Warbington:

 

We're home from Baker, duct tape trophies in hand!  As far as Mt. Bachelor team riders, it was a great weekend for the Warbingtons, Gus won Juniors (12-15), and Max took home 3rd in his first year as a Younger AM (16-19). Curtis Ciszek made finals and wound up 16th in Pro Men. Ashley Thornton competed in Pro Women, but just missed making finals.

(FYI - Dirksen got 5th in Pro Men & Logan Beaulieu got 2nd in Younger Ams.  Adam Haynes was 2nd in Masters)  

1st place finishers can be found here.

Also, here's a link to a good article that talks about the 25th Anniversary of the LBS.

 

I'll email some photos ASAP, and the guys are making an edit with sweet helmet cam footie of the course.  It's terrifying!  They'll send you a link once it's up.

See you soon, Max & Gus are looking forward to the WinterFest rail jam.

Rebekah

 

Here's an email from local grom mom Rebekah Warbington:

 

We're home from Baker, duct tape trophies in hand!  As far as Mt. Bachelor team riders, it was a great weekend for the Warbingtons, Gus won Juniors (12-15), and Max took home 3rd in his first year as a Younger AM (16-19). Curtis Ciszek made finals and wound up 16th in Pro Men. Ashley Thornton competed in Pro Women, but just missed making finals.

(FYI - Dirksen got 5th in Pro Men & Logan Beaulieu got 2nd in Younger Ams.  Adam Haynes was 2nd in Masters)  

1st place finishers can be found here.

Also, here's a link to a good article that talks about the 25th Anniversary of the LBS.

 

I'll email some photos ASAP, and the guys are making an edit with sweet helmet cam footie of the course.  It's terrifying!  They'll send you a link once it's up.

See you soon, Max & Gus are looking forward to the WinterFest rail jam.

Rebekah

 

Check out the latest Snowboard Magazine post on Mt Bachelor from our friend Aaron Hanlon. He's been enjoying the snowfall and the blue skies that follow. Sweet pics too.

Check out the latest Snowboard Magazine post on Mt Bachelor from our friend Aaron Hanlon. He's been enjoying the snowfall and the blue skies that follow. Sweet pics too.

Colorado was a busy place this past weekend for snow sport lovers from around the World. The SIA Snow Show found a new home in Denver after 30 years of living in Vegas; X Games 14 went off in Aspen, along with the Golden Globes of skiing - The Powder Awards.

Mt Bachelor athlete Tim Durtschi was up for several nominations, but walked away with 2 awards: one for Best Man Made Air, and one for Best Jib (which was actually filmed at Mt B by Poor Boyz Productions...the tree he jibbed lives here...somewhere :) )  .

Read the write up and view pics of Tim at the event here.

Colorado was a busy place this past weekend for snow sport lovers from around the World. The SIA Snow Show found a new home in Denver after 30 years of living in Vegas; X Games 14 went off in Aspen, along with the Golden Globes of skiing - The Powder Awards.

Mt Bachelor athlete Tim Durtschi was up for several nominations, but walked away with 2 awards: one for Best Man Made Air, and one for Best Jib (which was actually filmed at Mt B by Poor Boyz Productions...the tree he jibbed lives here...somewhere :) )  .

Read the write up and view pics of Tim at the event here.

High Cascade Snowboard Camp held their first slope style events of 2010 this past weekend at Mt Bachelor. Check out some pics of unknown riders, taken by Kyle Ohlson.

 

 

 

 

 

Check out the next HCSC event at Mt Bachelor on February 20/21 - Slope Saturday and Pipe on Sunday

High Cascade Snowboard Camp held their first slope style events of 2010 this past weekend at Mt Bachelor. Check out some pics of unknown riders, taken by Kyle Ohlson.

 

 

 

 

 

Check out the next HCSC event at Mt Bachelor on February 20/21 - Slope Saturday and Pipe on Sunday

Colin Clarke rides for Mt Bachelor, but he is rarely in town! He has been competing anywhere and every where he can, he gets photos and makes videos. Check out his edits from his time at Northstar

A few runs at Northstar from Colin Clarke on Vimeo.

 

 and this one from Park City.

 

What's up next for Colin?

 

    Slope Style at Northstar Feb 6 & 7 - a 3Star TTR event

    Aspen Open (X Games qualifier) Feb 11 - 14

    Bear Mtn to film for Sundays in the Park, webisode and video for Transworld

 

Then maybe he'll come back to Bend...maybe.

Colin Clarke rides for Mt Bachelor, but he is rarely in town! He has been competing anywhere and every where he can, he gets photos and makes videos. Check out his edits from his time at Northstar

A few runs at Northstar from Colin Clarke on Vimeo.

 

 and this one from Park City.

 

What's up next for Colin?

 

    Slope Style at Northstar Feb 6 & 7 - a 3Star TTR event

    Aspen Open (X Games qualifier) Feb 11 - 14

    Bear Mtn to film for Sundays in the Park, webisode and video for Transworld

 

Then maybe he'll come back to Bend...maybe.

It was new, it was different and it was fun. Mt Bachelor's first ever, PIG Comp went off today in the Chipper Park on the Skyliner Chair. Special thanks to K2, Faction Skis, Dakine, Burton, Anon, Spacecraft, Orage and a huge thanks to Skjersaa's, Powder House & Helly Hansen!

Boar Division (advanced) Snowboard

1.  Max Warbington - Oregon Cup trophy and K2 snowboard!   
2.  Justin Norman

3. Wes Coughlin

Boar Division (advanced) Ski

1.  Connor Bennett - Oregon Cup trophy and Faction Skis!

2.  Joey Van Der Meer

3.  Ari Delashmutt

Wilbur (middle)

1. Grant Gorham - ski

1. Mike Honey - snowboard

2. Tyson Engel - snowboard

Piglet (beginner)

1. Anna Gorham - ski

It was new, it was different and it was fun. Mt Bachelor's first ever, PIG Comp went off today in the Chipper Park on the Skyliner Chair. Special thanks to K2, Faction Skis, Dakine, Burton, Anon, Spacecraft, Orage and a huge thanks to Skjersaa's, Powder House & Helly Hansen!

Boar Division (advanced) Snowboard

1.  Max Warbington - Oregon Cup trophy and K2 snowboard!   
2.  Justin Norman

3. Wes Coughlin

Boar Division (advanced) Ski

1.  Connor Bennett - Oregon Cup trophy and Faction Skis!

2.  Joey Van Der Meer

3.  Ari Delashmutt

Wilbur (middle)

1. Grant Gorham - ski

1. Mike Honey - snowboard

2. Tyson Engel - snowboard

Piglet (beginner)

1. Anna Gorham - ski

The Burton Am Series 2010 at Mt Hood Meadows last weekend was the first time this season that some Bend snowboarders had been in a pipe all year, but that didn't stop them from delivering runs that gave 2 riders qualifying spots in the US Open and some big bucks.

MtB athlete Jonny Malanga was throwing down the biggest airs in the pipe, but it was the young Ben Ferguson that took home the $750 first place finish and qualified for the Open.

12 ladies competed and it was MtB's own Katie Williams who took first in pipe, second in slope & best trick in slope, plus scored a spot to the US Open. Ashley Thornton took third place in both events and became $500 richer by the end of the weekend.

 Women's Slope Style.

Burton Am Series 2010 Mt Hood Meadows Men’s Halfpipe Results:
1. Ben Ferguson
2. Johnny Malanga
3. Matt Guess
Best Trick: Matt Guess – Crippler 720 Truckdriver

Burton Am Series 2010 Mt Hood Meadows Women’s Halfpipe Results:
1. Katie Williams
2. Raelynd Tarnove
3. Ashley Thorton
Best Trick: Niki Kole – Ally Oop hand plant

Burton Am Series Mt Hood Meadows Men’s Slopestyle Results:
1. Skylar Thorton
2. Rick Millet
3. Ryan Linnert
Best Trick: Ryan Linnert - Backside 720 Truckdriver

Burton Am Series Mt Hood Meadows Women’s Slopestyle Results:
1. Kumara Kelley
2. Katie Williams
3. Ashley Thorton
Best Trick: Katie Williams – Frontside 540 Indy

Read more on Snowboarder Mag's website...slope & pipe

The Burton Am Series 2010 at Mt Hood Meadows last weekend was the first time this season that some Bend snowboarders had been in a pipe all year, but that didn't stop them from delivering runs that gave 2 riders qualifying spots in the US Open and some big bucks.

MtB athlete Jonny Malanga was throwing down the biggest airs in the pipe, but it was the young Ben Ferguson that took home the $750 first place finish and qualified for the Open.

12 ladies competed and it was MtB's own Katie Williams who took first in pipe, second in slope & best trick in slope, plus scored a spot to the US Open. Ashley Thornton took third place in both events and became $500 richer by the end of the weekend.

 Women's Slope Style.

Burton Am Series 2010 Mt Hood Meadows Men’s Halfpipe Results:
1. Ben Ferguson
2. Johnny Malanga
3. Matt Guess
Best Trick: Matt Guess – Crippler 720 Truckdriver

Burton Am Series 2010 Mt Hood Meadows Women’s Halfpipe Results:
1. Katie Williams
2. Raelynd Tarnove
3. Ashley Thorton
Best Trick: Niki Kole – Ally Oop hand plant

Burton Am Series Mt Hood Meadows Men’s Slopestyle Results:
1. Skylar Thorton
2. Rick Millet
3. Ryan Linnert
Best Trick: Ryan Linnert - Backside 720 Truckdriver

Burton Am Series Mt Hood Meadows Women’s Slopestyle Results:
1. Kumara Kelley
2. Katie Williams
3. Ashley Thorton
Best Trick: Katie Williams – Frontside 540 Indy

Read more on Snowboarder Mag's website...slope & pipe

Mt Bachelor supports Bend local and Olympic hopeful, Adam Smith. He has set his sights on Olympics 2010 and has a very good shot at them. Career highlights include 4 FIS Snowboard World Cup podiums, 5 Time FIS World Championship Team member, 1st place FIS World CUP Landgraaf Netherlands, 4th place FIS World Championships Whistler B.C. and a US National Champion Aspen Colorado, AST Overall Champion.

Read what Adam has to say about his quest for the Olympics:

"The Olympic selection process is a series of 5 World Cup races that started in December in Telluride.  If I place in the top 4 at any of these selected races I automatically get a spot on the Olympic team.  If no one gets a top 4 result then they go to your best two finishes and may end up sending 1 or 2 people.  I'm leading the qualifiers coming out of the first two events in Telluride, Co. I left New Year's Eve and flew to Europe for the next three events.  I'm super stoked to get back racing I feel I'm riding really strong and fast!  The next three races are in Austria, Switzerland and Quebec, Canada!  Its going to get a little cut throat between all the guys the next few weeks but I'm confident I'll ride well and come out with an Olympic spot at the end of the month." 

You can keep up with Adam on Twitter @AdamSmithUSA or become a fan on Facebook at Adam Smith Snowboarding, or check out his new website here: [www.adamsmithusa.com]

Mt Bachelor supports Bend local and Olympic hopeful, Adam Smith. He has set his sights on Olympics 2010 and has a very good shot at them. Career highlights include 4 FIS Snowboard World Cup podiums, 5 Time FIS World Championship Team member, 1st place FIS World CUP Landgraaf Netherlands, 4th place FIS World Championships Whistler B.C. and a US National Champion Aspen Colorado, AST Overall Champion.

Read what Adam has to say about his quest for the Olympics:

"The Olympic selection process is a series of 5 World Cup races that started in December in Telluride.  If I place in the top 4 at any of these selected races I automatically get a spot on the Olympic team.  If no one gets a top 4 result then they go to your best two finishes and may end up sending 1 or 2 people.  I'm leading the qualifiers coming out of the first two events in Telluride, Co. I left New Year's Eve and flew to Europe for the next three events.  I'm super stoked to get back racing I feel I'm riding really strong and fast!  The next three races are in Austria, Switzerland and Quebec, Canada!  Its going to get a little cut throat between all the guys the next few weeks but I'm confident I'll ride well and come out with an Olympic spot at the end of the month." 

You can keep up with Adam on Twitter @AdamSmithUSA or become a fan on Facebook at Adam Smith Snowboarding, or check out his new website here: [www.adamsmithusa.com]

Mt Bachelor Sponsored Athlete, Joey presents an edit for you. Enjoy!

Mt Bachelor Sponsored Athlete, Joey presents an edit for you. Enjoy!

Tapper shooting some photos of Mt Bachelor Sponsored Athlete, Aaron Karitis ripping down Summit this past weekend.

Photos taken by: Jon Tapper

Here are some shots of Mt Bachelor Sponsored Athlete, Lucas Wachs. Photos taken over the past few days, from powder to the park.

Mt Bachelor sponsored athlete, Max Warbington rippin' around the mountain.

For more event coverage checkout Snowboard Mag. Here are the course results from The Derby:

Men's Snowboard

1. Curtis Ciszek (26.72sec )
2. Logan Beaulieu (27.01sec)
3. Adam Haynes (27.12 sec)

Women's Snowboard

1. Shelly Ciszek (30.49sec)
2. Ashely Thorton (31.56sec)
3. Anne Jackson (32.62sec)

Ski

1. Eric Pollard (25.74 sec)
2. Chris Benchetler (26.78 sec)
3. Chris Jordan (27.80 sec)

Mono Ski

1. Gary Crosswhite (34.32sec)
2. Ravi Drngan (37.68sec)
3. Kevin McCormack (53.37sec)

Old n' Wiser

1. Martin Warbington (31.23 sec)
2. Jill Beaulieu (39.05 sec)
3. Mike Beaulieu (40.49 sec)

Groms

1. Gabe Ferguson (30.12 sec)
2. Jake Selover (31.40 sec)
3. Landon Caldwell (31.70 sec)

Here's a line-up of whats going this weekend:

• Skjersaa's Rail Jam ( Friday 12/11/09 ): The official, unofficial kick off of the season. Year after year, the best of the best get together to throw down under the lights in Skjersaa's parking lot. Show your support.
• Oregon Cup Night Rail Jam & Blacklight Party ( Saturday 12/12/09 ): Back by popular demand! The 2010 Oregon Cup brought to you by our favorite local shred shops - Skjersaa's, Helly Hansen & Powder House - kicks off with the Night Time Rail Jam. Throw down under the lights, at night, in the West Village Base Area and cozy up next to the enormous bonfire in front of the Jam. Click here for more details.
• Dirksen Dirby ( Sunday 12/13/09 ): The Derby is BACK for its third season!! This race is pure comedy and skill and it's your opportunity to win some of Josh's killer schwag from Salomon Snowboards, Dakine, Bonfire & Scott. Join Josh and his buds for a freeride event to raise money and awareness for Tyler Eklund.

For more info checkout the Mt Bachelor Events Page. See everyone this weekend and I will leave you with these parting words...

For more contact info check out Skjersaas Website

Mt Bachelor Sponsored Athlete, Lucas Wachs floating through Slopestyle under Pine this past Thanksgiving weekend.

Time for props. Props to Hames Ellerbe for building this wild n' crazy booter. Props to Pete Alport for thinking up the shot and bringing in the talent, props to Abe Blair for his continuing photo domination, and Props to Mt. Bachelor for the recent rad stream of coverage far and wide.

Hames and his Park Pals have been hard at work with the 16 features or so off of Sunshine. It is a pretty impressive early season park complete with boxes, rails, bonks, tables and hips. It'll be moving to Slope soon... very soon.

"Even the steepest mountains are no obstacle for Grant. He has won back-to-back United States of America Snowboard Association national championships (10-and-under division) in halfpipe skiing. Grant is also a bruising linebacker in football and a dynamo at lacrosse, scoring 42 goals in 10 games for his team, the Mammoths."

For more information be sure to pick up a SI Kids issue or check out SI Kids website.

Pow slashing in October! from Tre Squad on Vimeo.

Do the Warbingtons ever go to school? I always see and hear of them riding and filming!! I guess when you're that good, who needs skool?

On a different note, Chris Justema is well known throughout Central Oregon as the face of Cascade Lakes Brewery, but did you realize that he usually claims 75 +/- days of skiing at MtB?? Read more about Chris and his RV snowcamping adventures here, as well as What's New at Mt Bachelor.

The time has come to vote for your favorite 10 male skiers (HELLO TIM DURTSCHI!! - MTB ATHLETE AND OUR VOTE FOR HIS PART IN POOR BOYZ PRODUCTIONS' "EVERY DAY IS A SATURDAY") and five female skiers in Powder Magazine's 2010 Video Awards and Reader Poll. You could win a VIP trip to the 2010 Powder Video Awards in Aspen, CO, during the Winter X Games! Results will be posted on Jan 30, 2010. Go here to cast your votes.

Today's Tip: Dialing in your TRICK LIST for the upcoming season.

The season 09/10 winter season is almost here! Feel like your endless bag of tricks has gone empty? Here are a few insider tips on how to impress your little snow-bunny or snow-man.

1. Style is all that matters.
2. Know the difference between a good rider and strong rider. The picture above illustrates a "strong" rider.
3. Remember... bad is the new good.
4. Stay safe and eat healthy!

Thank you for the 5 minutes of your life you will never get back. Have a great weekend!

When the weather starts to change, Mt Bachelor's sister resort on the Sierra summit Boreal Mountain Resort turns on the snow guns. Several days of serious snowmaking allowed the resort to open up the Castle Peak Quad for its earliest season opening in history on Friday, October 9.

Back for it's 5th year in a row, Boreal hosted the JPi5 Event, Oct. 10-11. What used to be only open to pro shredders, was opened up to the public this year. Jibassic Public Invitational 5 was judged by Robbie Sell from FUEL TV and the Boreal Park Crew. Not an easy job, I'm sure!

Prizes included $2000 in cash for best tricks. Given away on the spot!
Custom Graphic Moment Skis for the Standout Skier.
Custom Graphic Smokin’ Snowboard for the Standout Snowboarder AND the Standout Rider in the Team Comp won two round trip anywhere/anytime tickets from Southwest Airlines!

There was also a Team Video Challenge where an additional $2K will be awarded to the best video, and $500 for the most viewed video.

MTB rider, Max Warbington was there with TEAM VISUAL COLLECTION for the Team Challenge. View their video here, shot by local filmer Cameron Fair. Watch it many times to help them win the money! 

bk

Check out this video for fresh tricks and some sweet Bachy footy too. Get pumped for the season!!

Get in the Van (Full Movie) from Get in the Van on Vimeo.

A free snowboarding movie.

Filmed & Edited by Rob Balding

Riding By:
Alex Horgan
Jordon Basurto
Blake Geis
Chris Gulick
Cameron McCutcheon
Ty Walker
Alex Pederson
Raleigh Butler
Danny Buller
Johnny Brady
Curtis Woodman
Kyle Earl
Brandon Cocard
Vince Lewis
Dan Pitbladdo
and Party Time Friends

Today's Tip: Driving up to the mountain

You may encounter a lone rider throwing out the thumb to get a ride up to the mountain. Use your noggin and stay away from suspicious looking hitch-hikers.

Make it to the mountain safe and have a great day!

Sesh:is a colloquial or slang short form of session. Generally, "sesh" refers to a period of time spent engaged in some group activity. Increasingly, it has come to mean, particularly among young people, an informal, often impromptu, get-together or meeting to perform a group activity, usually with an element of excitement!

Photos of Sponsored Athlete, Max Warbington taking advantage of the early season snow fall. Pictures taken by Tyler Orton.

For your viewing pleasure, here are some images from last season's photo shoots. Thanks for the photos Abe and Alex!

For more photo check out our Flickr Page.

Shine your boots, wax-up your board, WINTER IS ON IT'S WAY!

 

Here’s the LIST:

 

Taylor Bacci

Dru Brownrigg

Dan Bruton

Kent Callister

Curtis Ciszek

Colin Clarke

Wes Coughlin

Ari Delashmutt

Josh Dodson

Tim Durtschi

Mark Dvorak

Moo Eakin

Ben Ferguson

Gabe Ferguson

Grant Gorham

Nathan Jacobson

Aaron Karitis

Jonny Malanga

Justin Norman

Cole Ortega

Jake Selover

Austin Smith

Ashley Thornton

Joey Van Der Meer

Lucas Wachs

Gus Warbington

Max Warbington

Ben Watts

Katie Williams

 

 

Welcome to the Mt Bachelor Family. We look forward to a rad season of shred with you.

 

Athlete bio pages coming soon.

Wow what a season. I knew right away when I started considering a move to Mt. Bachelor from my previous role with Sunday River that there would be surprises and challenges. There was plenty of heat in the kitchen. Is it gone now? Nope. But there is less due to markedly improved communication with guests and the community – and our goal is to continue to mend those fences. The folks who frequent the Freeride Blog this time of year are our sponsored athletes, local shop owners/employees, rabid riders, and their friends and family. This is a tight group, and one that I wanted to take time to address.

I have always embraced the “freeride” side of our sport from a marketing perspective. Whether it be the photo/film shoot side, the park and pipe product (going to bat for the park department), or the online promotion of all such things. At the handful of previous ski areas I was employed at, there was usually little or no focus on bettering such things. I truly enjoyed building new programs from scratch to help the best riders on the mountain gain the respect they deserved. Along the way, I got an award from Ski Area Management for the creation of the No Bib Jib Series, which was one of the first grassroots event series to allow athletes to compete with their friends on a team. I also organized the east coast’s first superpark 3 years in a row, where athletes got together with their media of choice to hit the biggest features of the year – an opportunity that didn’t exist on the east coast any year prior. Plenty of Heat Harvest attendees are now athletes on the national stage. These resorts didn’t sponsor athletes upon my arrival, but my constant goal of supporting this segment of the industry brought athletes on board. It’s the area of the industry where I got my start – being sponsored, competing, shooting, and filming. I care passionately about it.

At Mt. Bachelor instead of there being little to no programs in place, there was an established sponsor program. I arrived in September to a selection process already underway. Knowing full well that I was not informed to determine who should be selected or if the preset contract was legit, we ran with what was in place from previous seasons and I deferred to folks who knew the crop of applicants. It was best to assess and make adjustments in the future. It was setup in a cookie cutter fashion where everyone agreed to get XYZ from Mt. Bachelor and give XYZ to Mt. Bachelor. I found that odd since not all sponsored athletes are created equal. Some travel non-stop and are rarely in town as they pursue their international goals, some are more local level professionals who would likely be involved more. But it would have to do for year one as it was already done – the requirements present led to some challenges, but we could fix things up in year two, which is where we find ourselves now. This year’s sponsor program will reflect less of a one’s size fits all approach.

We set out to improve much of the freeride experience in the interim. There was agreement that the old freeride series was stale, so we developed the Oregon Cup. We added cash to the prize pools and developed event formats that would allow competitors to get a lot of runs instead of standing around. Some worked great, some were so-so. We’re keeping the great ones and re-working the so-so’s.

We moved the marketing department from town to the mountain, right on the snow. I’m told that in the past it has been challenging for some of our top athletes to get assistance with mountain access when they have other top pros visiting or folks to film with. This move to the mountain greatly reduced that challenge for those who stayed in touch, or simply asked. Will every request without notice be able to fulfilled? Likely not – but if we know ahead of time it helps a lot, and if we don’t, we’ll hopefully be around to help. This is an industry standard.

We built an online portal for all things freeride, instead of the old static page. This feature allowed those who wanted it to get far greater local exposure and the feedback was that it was another example of the positive moves. We are putting more resources into it this year again.

We made a concerted effort to bring exposure opportunities to our sponsored athletes. A bunch this year got high paying gigs shooting with Hewlett Packard, others will be featured in Cascades East this fall, others will be on our trail map this year, and now our marketing materials actually highlight Bend talent instead of using bland stock shots. These opportunities are not up everyone’s alley, but they represent Mt. Bachelor using our resources and contacts to offer new opportunities to our core group of riders. A majority of our athletes have come forward saying how cool it is that Mt. Bachelor is working with/for them more now.

In the past our Park Manager had to pull teeth to host big exposure park shoots at the end of the year. Hames deserves a ton of props for the work that he does and he deserves the chance to show it off. This past spring we hosted 4 different large scale park shoots. Hames is the man who makes it happen on the hill, but this year he had a new ally in that process who was snowmobiling athletes, gathering the lift tickets, handling insurance, and assisting on-site.

Access to industry passes for key photographers and videographers has become the norm quickly. When we get requests for photos and video from paying outlets, we pass them along to these same key folks. It’s a partnership.

These moves have occurred all the while defending the increased park acreage and focus to the larger non-park crowd who would rather see it gone. Here is an excerpt from one of those exchanges:

"Please give Chipper back to the skiers. It has always been one the favorite runs for veteran, long time Mt Bachelor skiers (read: Season Pass Holders who paid full price for their skiing rather than the current "stimulus" prices).
By moving the "terrain park" to chipper you have drastically changed one of the best spots on the mountain, tailoring it for a very few users. Please take this seriously; it is the topic of a lot of lift chair conversations." - Guest

"The terrain park is currently our most highly trafficked run by a wide margin. These people are guests, and most season passholders, and their numbers are not few. We have a wide variety of publics to make happy. Terrain parks reside on about 2% of our total terrain. They are an integral part of all ski areas currently and are likely to increase in the future, at all ski areas as they attract new users into our sport.
We grant that there are guests that would prefer not to see terrain parks on any trail they would care to ski. In today’s ski industry that is simply not likely to occur as having a couple of trails dedicated to parks that are easy to get to, easy to lap, and a moderate pitch is a required part of any ski mountain.
While I do grant that it is not your cup of tea, and that it is surely an inconvenience to your preferred style of skiing, I also think that you deserve a straight answer as to why it is located where it is, and why we have them on a handful of trails. So that is what I have provided. Terrain park users are guests too. As such, they get 2% of the mountain dedicated to their efforts.
We do take it seriously. We take the balance of making many different people happy at the same time seriously. Sometimes that requires compromises between those groups of people and sometimes it just takes some getting used to.
Some people like terrain parks, some people do not, both are good people and deserve their needs met." - Alex

Why this update you ask? It’s simple. I want to make it clear to the passionate freeride patrons that our goals are aligned. Our actions make that clear. We’re going to stay committed to building the ways we can work together. Are we perfect people? Nope. Will there occasionally be decisions made or policies enforced that someone disagrees with? Surely. In a couple of days we’ll publish our list of sponsored athletes for the coming season. It’s a large list and it’s a lot of support. Are there a couple riders that we want to sponsor that have chosen no longer to work with us? Yes. Will an odd rumor that occasionally arises impact our dedication to this segment of our sport? No. We will remain dedicated and open to improvement regardless.

Our goal is your goal. I think we’ll all be more effective listening to each other and working together. I look forward to continuing that method.

Thanks for reading. See you at the mountain.

Alex Kaufman
Marketing Director and one year Bend resident

The air is getting cooler, the long pants and boots are coming out of hiding. Stores start blowing out their inventory to make room for the new stuff. We patiently await the mail to deliver the latest issues so we can plan for what's hot this season. We pick out the clothing we want and the gear we wish for. It's a fact: September 1st unofficially marks the start of the winter season around here. But what really gets us in the mood for winter is when the movie premiers start....

Be sure to catch a local's favorite, RAGE FILMS' "Pretty Good" starring MTB skier Mark Dvorak and friends. The movie brings the best of the veterans and the newest up and comers together, whether it be on handrails in the city or huge cliffs in the back country. The films promises to please. Enjoy free skiing at it's finest this coming Saturday, September 12 at the Tower Theater. Two shows, 7 & 9pm. Please note that the 9:00 showing is 21 and over only. Tickets are $10. www.ragefilms.com

On Thursday, September 17, POOR BOYZ PRODUCTIONS takes you on the road and into the day-to-day lives of skiers around the globe. No matter the terrain, the conditions, or the time of day; as long as friends and snow are together - "Everyday is a Saturday".Check out the trailer here then make sure to be at McMenamin's St Francis School in Bend for the 7:30pm showing. Rumor is that Tim Durtschi will be on hand. You don't want to miss this movie that was partially filmed at Bachelor. Other athletes include Simon Dumont, Jossi Wells, TJ Schiller, Matt Walker, John Symms, Dane Tudor.

We are no longer taking applications for Free Ride sponsorship for the 2009/2010 season. We have been crazy busy meeting with all sorts of qualified individuals and the decision is going to be a tough one. Stay tuned for the results...to be posted by the end of the month.

MTB Team rider and all around totally awesome shred girl, Janna (Meyen) Weatherby will be featured on Fuel TV's "Daily Habit" show on August 3rd. When I asked Janna what the show would cover, this is what she said:

I got interviewed by the host (Pat Parnell) of "The Daily Habit" on Fuel Tv to air August 3rd Monday. We mostly re-capped my 08/09 season aka being ripped off at few events by lame judges (Dew Tour Stop @ Northstar) and winning the last event of the season ( Roxy Chicken Jam @ Mammoth).

Besides answering a lot of questions about my season we talked a lot about my long relationship with my outerwear company VOLCOM. From how i became a part of the Volcom Family in the mid-ninties to present day. They are going to air a bunch of really old Janna Grommet footage from the first Volcom movies aka The Garden and Alive We Ride. As well as more recent footage from this last season and Roxy Chicken Jam.

Basically we chat about how i am an old fart and still doing what i do and how Volcom has been a part in it the whole way. ---Janna

For those of you who don't know, The Daily Habit is a half-hour daily show highlighting today’s most-popular action sports celebrities, musicians, comedy, and cutting-edge new products. It’s hosted by Pat Parnell, NBC television commentator for the Olympic Games and the Dew Action Sports Tour. The Daily Habit airs each night at 6:00pm PT and is re-aired later in the evening at 9:00pm PT, and the following weekday at 11:30am PT and 2:30pm PT.

Janna is enjoying her summer, in typical pro snowboarder fashion...she is currently in New Zealand for the Burton Open and then a Volcom photo shoot.

In more "chicks who rip" kind of news, Ashley Thornton has returned from her amazing trip to Iceland. If you recall, Ashley was the grand prize winner for the 2009 Nikita Snowboard Clip Contest.

Nikita Iceland Roadtrip 2009 from Nikita Clothing on Vimeo.

Seems that Ashley has had quite a season, because she has been named to Flow's Team. Check out her bio.

In Grommie news,Kent Callister won first place in the Men's Am Skate Division at the 12th Annual Bonfire Pipe to Pipe Comp.

In Ben Watts news...take a look at his Nike6.0 page. A little known fact about Ben and Nike...Ben was the first athlete added to the 6.0 Team...and look at who his team mates are now.

Want to be sponsored by Mt. Bachelor? Your skills, exposure, results, outlook and attitude will be critiqued by a panel of judges. In order to make sure that the selection process is fair, we ask anyone who has not been sponsored by Mt. Bachelor before to submit photos &/or video, resume that includes a list of sponsors, competition results and achievements, plus plans for the future. If you have been sponsored by Mt. Bachelor this past season or in previous years, please contact the Mt. Bachelor Marketing Department by emailing bkinney@mtbachelor.comor calling 541-382-1709 no later than September 1, 2009.

08/09 MTB Team rider, Colin Clarke displaying his big skills for the pros. Photo by Kirk DeVoll.

A couple shots to keep ya curious. Poor Boyz Productions is in town shooting for Everyday is a Saturday. Athletes include Tim Durtschi, Simon Dumont, Jossi Wells, TJ Schiller, Matt Walker, John Symms, Dane Tudor. Check these out.

A couple shots to keep ya curious. Poor Boyz Productions is in town shooting for Everyday is a Saturday. Athletes include Tim Durtschi, Simon Dumont, Jossi Wells, TJ Schiller, Matt Walker, John Symms, Dane Tudor. Check these out.

This weekend come Ski and Snowboard to support the Division Street Skatepark Project (DSSP).   This Oregon Cup event will be a head to head Jib Off and Ollie comp.  Two box features will be set up, one competitor will move on while the other is eliminated, bracket style.  The entry fee is $5.00,  all proceeds from the Oregon Cup will support the DSSP.   The DSSP is a grassroots community project working to build one of the best skateparks in Oregon, right here in Bend.  Check out their website HERE for details.   Click HERE  for more info about the event.  

Park Update for 4/10

Finished the proline on slopestyle tonight and started on expanding lower chipper to take up the whole run.  Here are the features.

Superpipe is open but is not cut due to conserving the pipe to last longer.

Slopestyle:

3 Large Jumps, 3 medium Jumps, 1 Large Wallride

Sunshine:

4 Small Jumps

Upper Chipper:

Small Jump, medium down box, medium jump, medium flat box, medium jump, medium flat rail, medium jump, large flat down box, medium jump, large up flat down box, medium up to flat box, medium hip, medium hip, medium wallride.

Ipark and Pat's

Large down rail, large flat down rail, medium pole jam, medium true table, large down lift tower, medium barrel bonk, medium true table, medium road gap, large step down, large down rail, large step down, medium step up, large hip, medium spinning tire, large lift tower on a spine, large staircase, large down flat down rail, large spool, medium barrel bonks, large hip.

Lower Chipper

4 medium step downs

Ashley deserves an A+ for her 08/09 season.  Her results are solid; 4th place Nikita Chikita slopestyle, 5th Place Honda Sessions, 4th place Grand Prix slopestyle, 1st place Stomp Games slopestyle, and 1st Place Dirksen Derby.  Ashley was just courted "Betty of the Month" for Shred Betties.  Check out her Betty of the Month profile at Shred Betties.  Even more exciting, Ashley was the grand prize winner for the Nikita Snowboard Clip Contest.   Her prize, a trip to Iceland!  Here is her winning clip....

Congratulations Ashley.  Have fun in Iceland. 

10 year old Grom Squad Member, Nate Jacobson aka "Duder" is rocking the comps this winter.   A 4' 6" he may be small, but when it comes to freeride, he goes BIG!  When asked about his season Duder comments, “It was a great season because I won first place in one competition and made it to Nationals, I learned some new tricks like a back 5, front 5 and a backside 7.”   This April 4-11th Duder will be heading to Nationals at Copper Mountain in Colorado.  He qualified for both half-pipe and slope style.  After the season at Bachelor, Duder plans on wakeboarding, rock climbing, skating, and spending as much time at Mt. Hood preparing for next season.  Here are some resent results and photos of Duder...

Tamarack USASA event Feb. 21^st -22^nd
    1^st  in Half Pipe
    2^nd  in Slopestyle

Mt. Bachelor Enter the Dragon Feb. 28^th
    2^nd in Slopestyle

Mt. Bachelor Enter The Dragon Mar. 14^th-15^th
    2^nd Slopestyle #3
    3^rd Half pipe #2
    3^rd Half Pipe #3

 

 

Thanks to the Mt. Bachelor Park Crew, we have seen some of our best ever features this winter.  In a few weeks the Crew will start building the "Pro Line" Super Park.  This park will extend from the top of Chipper to lower Chipper.  Hames, the park manager,  mentioned "the slope style will become larger, we will add more snow features, new rails, and a mini pipe".  Stay tuned for more info on the Super Park...

 

Moo is having a sweet season.  In the last several weeks she has taken first in three comps...

 

1st at Tamarack slope style competition.

1st at Enter the dragon slope style.

1st at the high school freestyle state competition in slope.

2nd in pipe for the state competition. 

As you noticed before the last storm hit we were in the process of rebuilding the parks.  Right now we will continue rebuilding the parks as the previous storm of 40 inches set us back.  It looks as though another storm is moving in thursday and looks to be here for a little while.  Depending on how much snow the next storm brings will dictate how much rebuilding we can do.  We will get as much done for tomorrow as possible but, in the meantime go enjoy lots of pow slashes.

Unless you have been living under a rock this year, or are simply unable to be pleased, you've noticed that the parks at Mt. Bachelor continue to progress and leave our regional competition in the dust. The sheer number, variety, upkeep, and flow of features in the Skyliner Park Zone is well worth writing home about. Pete Alport, one of Bend's most esteemed and longtime freeride afficianado's, recently had this to say about this years output.

All photos are courtesy of Tyler Orton. See more of his work here: [www.flickr.com]

I moved from Portland to Bend in the Fall of 1994.  I was going on my sixth year of snowboarding, but still had not seen a real terrain park.  The 94’ Winter at Mt. Bachelor exposed me to a terrain park consisting of six features; four jumps and two wooden rails.  Almost fifteen years later and the present 2009 season: a terrain park that is progressive, innovative, and most importantly, FUN.   At a very rapid pace, terrain park manager, Hames Ellerbe, and his crew, are building a reputation that will rival resorts such as Breckenridge, Park City, and Mammoth.

As I rode through the park(s) today I tried to count all the features….I lost track at sixty.  Sixty features and these don’t include the unique lines riders create on their own, which could double this number.  Some of the features include a mandatory bomb drop, leading into a step-up and over, leading into a spinning tire jib, leading into a dub-kink, concluding with a double sided spindle….or wait, do you want to hit the bomb drop, leading into a down bar, into a side-angled table, on to a 40ft.+ lift tower rail step-down, into a spinning-tire hip?  Did I mention these two line options are just one-fifth of what the Skyliner Park has to offer?

Is this a fluke, a surge of energy due to the sunny weather? No.  Hames is adding new features and fine-tuning the current ones every night.   His crew is right there with him suggesting, sculpting, and maintaining the features.  I see the park crew early in the mornings raking out ruts, scraping off new snow, and even shaving the sides of the lips.  Shaving the sides isn’t necessarily for function, but rather for looks.  The crew wants their park to look proper so it stokes the local or the 1st time tourist who has never seen Mt. Bachelor’s Park.   Our park gets a clean high and tight fade each and every morning, barring a blizzard, and even then the Red Coat park staff can be seen with rakes cleaning off the fresh.

The only concern currently voiced, where are the monster sized jumps to practice those switch back 9s?  Patience.  After this weekends HCSC Enter The Dragon competition, the Pine Martin Slopestyle Park will be getting some added muscle.   I’m not sure of the exact increase in size, but let’s just say Hames wants be building jumps far bigger then what is currently in place.    I can’t wait to be shooting in the Slopestyle Park again.

Before I end my praising of Mt. Bachelor’s Terrain Park I want to mention that we have a great halfpipe and a brand new stair set box/rail feature.

If you want to ride or jump a wall, hip, tire, bomb-drop, table, step-up, halfpipe, box, rail, lift-tower, barrel, come to Mt. Bachelor, chances are you won’t be able to hit all the features in one day, let alone a weekend, let alone a season.

Thanks Hames and Crew
Sincerely,
Pete Alport

Riders for the Cure is just around the corner.  Join us this, April 4th, for a half pipe and / or rail jam / jib session.   Proceeds go to Sara's Project, a local breast cancer research and education project.  Entry is $35, helmets required.  All ages and abilities are welcome.  This is not a competition.   Some of the great prizes include....

 

Top 3 fund raisers:  Pair of skies or snowboard

$500 and over: 7th mt.

$300 and over: Dakine Backpack, Spy goggles, T-shirts

$150 and over: Spy Goggles, T-Shirts

Best Pink Costume: 1 Kicker Sound System

Limbo Champ: 1 Kicker Sound System

 

 

For more information click here.

 

 

Age: 25 

Years Riding: 22

Sponsors: Head, Arcteryx, Smith, Ortovox 

Favorite Run or Lift @ Bachy: Anything from T to B.

Most Memorable Bachelor Moment: Every chance I get to ski the mountain I grew up on. 

Favorite People to Ride With: My Dad

Why do you ride?: The freedom to do anything you want while in the mountains and the unbeatable feeling of a powder day.

Accomplishments/Results:  Skiing all over the world and 1^st descents in Alaska. 

Check out these awesome photos Aaron sent from his annual Alaska adventure; as director of operations at H2O Guides.  Aaron has been riding up north since January.  Take a look at http://www.alaskahelicopterskiing.com  to see what he has been up to.  We look forward to his return in the beginning of May. 

As some of you may have heard, our freeride friend and Mt Bachelor Marketing Coordinator Becky Kinney had an unfortunate snowboarding fall at Mission Ridge around Valentine's Day. She and a tree got into an argument, and the tree won. She was wearing a helmet. We are glad.

She is now on the boring road to recovery and has a few weeks left until she is back in action. On the positive side she's back in Bend, hanging out at home and looking forward to getting back at it. If you are buds with Becky and want to shoot her a text, she's more likely to get back to you now. We should all wish her a speedy recovery and best of luck watching Judge Judy and other awesome daytime tv.

 

I'll open comments on this post - pass along some positive vibes for BK.

So grom squad teamster Gus Warbington and his older brother Max have been payin' their dues on the contest circuit and silently stealing podium places while they're at it, with some buttery style i might add! Gus took 1st in the Junior men's Baker Banked Slalom (with a time of 1:38.53) while Max followed in near proximity and a second place finish with a time of 1:41.01. In addition, one of Bachelor's finest men of the shred (while not a member of the freeride team) also took the cake at the Baker Banked, local goomba stomper Logan Beaulieu took first in the Younger Amateurs division with a time of 1:33.42.

However it doesn't stop there! The Warbington's hit up the Rev Tour at Mt. Hood Meadows in which Max snagged a Third Place finish in pipe and an 11th place finish in slope, due to cancelled finals from weather. However this combination of admirable  placements put Max in 1st place overall qualifying him for the Grand Prix in Killington in the coming weeks! Go Max! 
AND as part of this super post i have included a little treat from the boys at Tre Squad for your viewing pleasure, check out Max and Logan straight slaying the Bachelor Park. These boys got style that make Rick James duck and cover, peep it.

Tre Squad edit! from Roberto Gongora on Vimeo.

After making the finals at the recent US Cellular Rail Jam here in Bend with some serious bomb drops, Lucas Wachs headed to Tamarack for a pipe and slope comp. He took home 1st place in both halfpipe and slopestyle over a strong group of local riders and other shredds from Jackson Hole.

Moo Eakin also showed those potato farmers how to ski by nabbing 1st place in the girls slope contest. Daddy Wachs is on the camera.

 

   

 

Props to Professor Clarke for topping a 44 deep field at the recent Burton Am Series held at Summit in Washington. His 1st place finish nabbed him $1000 smackers and entry into the US open. [www.snowboardermag.com]  

Have fun in VT. That ain't all - CC has a packed comp schedule. Check it.

Revolution Tour Slopestyle, Mt. Hood Meadows, OR Feb 21st

 

3star TTR Slopestyle, Waterville Valley, NH March 15th

 

6star TTR Slopestyle, U.S. Open, Stratton VT, March 16-22

 

5star TTR Big Air, Showdown Over the City, Grouse B.C. March 28th

 

Grenade Games, Mammoth Mtn CA, April 19-20th

Over the course of the coming weeks check back here at the freeride blog for Mt. Bachelor Exclusive Interviews with the team thats making it happen. This week check out Ashley Thornton's profile, or click here, for a brief insight to what makes this master of the shred stick tick!

Also! In addition to hosting some of the best freestyle terrain parks Bachelor has ever seen, (Thanks Hames!) keep in mind that Bachelor's Winter Stimulus Package is in effect, save hundreds on ski passes right now for you and the whole fam! Go get some!
R: KylestylePhoto Courtesy of Chris Nolte

This is a Fuel TV Snowboard Diaries episode from the Super Session last season. Check it..

bk

 

A ride in the park Terrain parks at Mt. Bachelor offer thrills to any skill level of skier or snowboarder By Mark Morical / The Bulletin

Published: January 30. 2009 4:00AM PST

 more photos | order photo

Hames Ellerbe, the terrain parks manager at Mt. Bachelor, tries out his wall ride under the Pine Marten chairlift last week.
Andy Tullis / The Bulletin

MOUNT BACHELOR —

They can often be seen in the slopestyle area from the Pine Mountain chairlift, impossibly young snowboarders twisting their bodies in unimaginable ways as they soar insanely high off a tabletop jump.

Most skiers and snowboarders watching from the lift think: “Wow, I’ll NEVER do that!”

Perhaps not at that level. But the terrain parks — areas with jumps, rails and other free- ride features — at Mt. Bachelor ski area are actually set up with different skill levels in mind.

The beginner can start out at the Sunshine terrain park and progress to the advanced features of slopestyle.

Riding a terrain park for the first time is a lesson in humility even for more seasoned skiers or snowboarders, who look on with amazement as kids as young as 4 or 5 years old fly off the jumps and grind the rails with relative ease.

“It seems every year they just get younger and younger and better and better,” says Hames Ellerbe, the terrain parks manager at Mt. Bachelor.

But Ellerbe contends that older snowriders can get started in terrain parks and find their comfort levels.

“I’ve seen 50- to 60-year-olds sliding boxes,” Ellerbe says. “It’s a wide age group. It’s just practice and learning, just like anything else. The more you do it, the better you’ll get.”

Following the trend of the last few years, the terrain parks at Bachelor are among the most popular runs on the mountain. The area near the Skyliner chairlift from Chipper to iPark, which includes medium to large features, has been the most frequently used run this season, according to Ellerbe.

When riding terrain parks, skiers and snowboarders should keep a typical riding stance, according to Ellerbe, with their knees bent and their weight centered. When they hit a jump, they can “pop” with their legs, affecting how high and far they travel through the air.

“The main thing is keeping an aggressive, ready stance,” Ellerbe says. “If you’re stiff-legged, it’s not a good thing. Keep your weight distributed evenly, so when you go in the air, you’re nice and balanced. Whereas if you’re sitting back, you’ll be flailing backward.”

Ellerbe emphasizes a terrain park code called Smart Style that addresses safety issues and how to effectively progress in the parks.

A recent session in the Sunshine Park left this snowboarding reporter — though humbled by the 6-year-olds flying higher than me — ready to move on to the Chipper area.

Terrain parks can be intimidating, because they can include jumps, tabletops, hips, pipes, boxes, rails, jibs and wall rides. Or, as Ellerbe puts it: “Pretty much anything you can imagine.”

On a recent cloudy day, Ellerbe surged up the slopestyle area’s wall ride — a 25-foot-high wood construction on which snowriders can slide up and down. He turned his skis on the wall, stalling before sliding safely back down to the snow.

“Making it safe is the main thing,” Ellerbe says of shaping such features. “Smooth takeoff, smooth landing. No jagged spikes anywhere.”

Ellerbe’s staff of six groomers goes to work when Mt. Bachelor closes every day at 4 p.m. They fill in ruts with snowcats and shape the features. The park crew of eight, called “park pals,” checks the parks each morning and puts up flags and signs so riders know where to find the features.

Heavy snowfall can make the grooming and shaping job more difficult.

“We try to keep up with the snow as much as possible, but you know how much it snows here,” Ellerbe says. “That’s when powder comes into play, and you should be out shredding that.”

Ellerbe is constantly switching features or adding new ones. In fact, he says the terrain parks are at only about 40 percent of what he plans to build this season. The late opening of Bachelor and the recent dearth of snowfall has him running behind.

“A couple more weeks and we should be fully up and running,” he says. “It kind of depends on the weather.”

Still, the terrain parks crew has been adding two to three features each night. Currently, the main expansion is taking place in the iPark and Chipper parks. Ellerbe says he will soon turn his attention to rebuilding the slopestyle area.

Skiers and snowboarders on the mountain can also give their input as to what they would like to see in the terrain parks.

“A lot of park riders come to us with ideas or things they don’t like,” says Jarrod Donatelli, the lead park pal at Bachelor. “We take that into consideration and try to give people what they want.”

Donatelli and other park pals also make sure snowriders are staying within their abilities.

The addition of more intermediate terrain with Upper Chipper and Pat’s Way parks this season appears to be a success, according to Donatelli.

“It seems to be working out great,” he says. “People are loving it. It’s the perfect pitch for a park.”

Ellerbe hopes to eventually have all the terrain parks located in the same area on the mountain, allowing riders to move more efficiently from park to park.

“The goal with moving everything to Chipper was getting all the riders in one spot so the progression is right there,” he says.

Ellerbe admits terrain parks are not for every skier and snowboarder. But the emergence of the parks and their popularity cannot be ignored. Most ski resorts in the country — including Hoodoo Mountain Resort and Willamette Pass in Central Oregon — have terrain parks.

“It’s fun and challenging, and it’s different,” Ellerbe says. “People don’t want a flat run all the time. If you keep doing the same thing over and over, it gets somewhat bland.”

And terrain parks are anything but bland.

  Super Pipe stats...
400 feet long with 18½-foot-high walls. Located below the Pine Marten chairlift.
The largest features on the mountain. Located below Pine Marten.
Geared toward intermediate riders, but with features challenging enough for seasoned pros. Located below the West Village Getback off the Skyliner chairlift.
Nearly a mile long and covering 1,000 vertical feet, Chipper is a highlight of the terrain park system. Located near the Skyliner chairlift.
For those just learning or trying to move up to a more medium-sized park. Located below the West Village Getback off the Skyliner chairlift.
For the first-time terrain-park rider. Located next to the Sunshine chairlift.
SOURCE: www.mtbachelor.com.

Safety tips
• Every time you use freestyle terrain, make a plan for each feature you want to use.
• Your speed, approach and takeoff will directly affect your maneuver and landing.
• Before getting into freestyle terrain observe all signage and warnings.
• Scope around the jumps first, not over them.
• Use your first run as a warm-up run and to familiarize yourself with the terrain.
• Be aware that the features change constantly due to weather, usage, grooming and time of day.
• Do not jump blindly, and use a spotter when necessary.
• Know your limits and ride within your ability level.
• Look for small progression parks or features to begin with and work your way up.
• Freestyle skills require maintaining control on the ground and in the air.
• Do not attempt any features unless you have sufficient ability and experience to do so safely.
• Inverted aerials increase your risk of injury and are not recommended.
• Respect the terrain and others.
• One person on a feature at a time.
• Wait your turn and call your “drop.”
• Always clear the landing area quickly.
• Respect all signs and stay off closed terrain and features.
SOURCE: www.terrainparksafety.org

The Oregon Cup Free Ride Series is well underway now at Mt Bachelor. We just held our second event in our 4 part (plus 2!!) series.

With $2000 in cash at stake, The Oregon Cup Open Class Bachy Solo Slope Style Comp went off!

Saturday's event was held under the Pine Marten chair. The music was bumping and participants were seen flipping and flying through the air, as covered by the Bend Bulletin. The course was freshly groomed and included three medium jumps, and a choice of either a 25 foot tall wall ride or a flat down rail at the bottom. The jam format allowed competitors to each get 5 or more runs in the alloted 2 hours, then each run was scored by our accredited judges, with the top 3 runs determining placement.

    

(Jon Lang busts out a smooth backflip)...

Big thanks to the park pals, grooming staff, events crew, and all other departments that helped with the OC Slope Style. 

Thank you Powder House, Skjersaa's & Helly Hansen. Without these shop sponsors, we could not give out such a huge purse of cash.

AND thanks to K2 Skis & Snowboarding, who provided the skis and snowboard for our bib drawing.

When all was said and done, the results were tallied and the following riders claimed their loot.  

Saturday, January 24, 2009 - Open Class

Women Snowboard/Ski - 1st: ($300) Ashley Thornton - snwbrd, 2nd: ($200) Katie Williams - snwbrd, 3rd: Tori Koski - snwbrd.

Men Ski - 1st: ($500) Mark Dvorak, 2nd: ($250) Ari Delashmutt, 3rd: Dan Bruton.

Men Snowboard -  1st: ($500) Colin Clarke, 2nd: ($250) Josh Dodson, 3rd: JD Dennis.

See Oregon Cup #2 Results for the Wrap Up of Sunday's event....

Save the date for the next Oregon Cup event.......March 21 & 22: Team Slope Style!!

bk :)

Regardless of our interesting weather here in January, Bachelor Freeride Team member Tim Durtschi has been throwin hot laps through our pristine parks (THANKS HAMES!). In spite of the combination of freezing rain and high winds over the last two weeks Tim has been shooting with local videographer Pete Alport for the upcoming movie from Poor Boyz Productions and shredding an unusual amount of park for this time of the year. However, rest assured as old man winter is about to come dump some serious pow pow our way. With fingers crossed for some cool weather, keep an eye out for Tim in addition to all the local Saga bros tearing it up this January and get in on the fun. Shred on.

Update for 1/21

Sunshine

small flat box, small box top, 3 small table tops, small cross coarse

Slopestyle

3 medium table tops, 3 medium to large table tops,  large wall ride, large flat down rail

Superpipe

open

Upper Chipper

3 medium flat boxes, 4 medium table tops, 1 large flat down box, 1 medium down box, 1 medium wallride

Pats/Ipark

2 medium to large table tops, 1 medium to large step down, the start of the next to decks in the line, large down rail, medium flat rail, large up flat down rail, large down lift tower, medium barrel bonk, large flat rail. 

Lower Chipper

3 decks that will soon have features

expansion going on nightly

Here is what the parks look like for 1/15

Sunshine

small flat box, small box top, 3 small table tops, and a small cross coarse

Slopestyle

 3 medium to large table tops, 2 medium table tops, 1 large wallride, 1 large flat down rail

Upper Chipper

4 medium table tops, 2 medium flat boxes, 1 medium up box, 1 large flat down box, 1 large up flat down box, 1 medium wall ride

Pats/ I park

2 medium to large table tops, 1 large down rail, 1 medium flat rail, 1 medium butter pad, 1 medium barrel bonk, 1 large lift tower

Lower chipper

3 rollers

Superpipe is open

 

Look for expansion in Ipark pats, and slopestyle for saturday.

 

Mt Bachelor Team skier, Aaron Karitis, is on location in Hokkaido, Japan. For 4 days straight it's nothing but sunshine and clear skies, an absolute rarity this time of year at Niseko Ski Resort, the second snowiest resort in the world. But as the sun sets on the 4th day, the weather changes, snow starts dropping and Aaron wakes up to deep pow. Read his account as he gets freshy face shots all day with fellow skiers Pep Fujas and Eric Pollard. Full story from Powder Magazine here with photos.

You can also check out Aaron's story "The Uncivilized Bachelor Portfolio" in the Feb issue of Bend Living . bk

Bigger and better than ever, the 10th annual rail jam, held in the Old Mill District is sure to be amazing! The enormous jib park built by Alport Productions, will explode with fireworks and phenomenal talent as live music bumps in the background. Come support local and national riders as they compete for over $5000 in cash and prizes. This is the place to be during WinterFest.

What: The 10th Annual U.S. Cellular Rail Jam in the Old Mill District

When: February 13 (skiers) and 14 (snowboarders)

For more information and to download an entry form, click here. Or pick up a form at Lay It Out Events: 704 NW Georgia Ave, Bend, 97701 (hint, hint: the back of the entry form from Lay It Out shows the design of the event...it's huge!!). OR email info@layitoutevents.com.

bk

Last April, Snowboarder Mag came out to Bachelor for an event of super proportions - Super Session. MTB Team riders Austin Smith and Curtis Ciszek helped the crew feel at home. The conditions weren't ideal for park shots, more like sweet powder slashers, but the guys made do. Especially thanks to Hames and his park staff. Check out the latest issue for all the photos of the Super Session and details, on sale now.

This gallery is brought to you by Snowboarder Magazine

  

Mt Bachelor Park Staff.

bk

Heading up Pine Marten early Saturday morning I knew today was going to be a good one. The snow report said high overcast clouds, cold temps and little wind. Ohhh yeah...today was the day to shred.

So as the clouds started to clear by 9am, we had already ripped a few runs down Skyliner and were headed to Rainbow. It was turning into a gorgeous blue bird day at Mt Bachelor, no winds, super cold and sunshine!! The snow was good, the trees were awesome and the groomers were oh so nice. I was going to take full advantage of the perfect conditions. Outback chair opened by noon, and Northwest made it's season debut by 1:30. You can just feel the excitement in the picture below.

  

Considering our season total snow fall is now about 250 inches and it is only January 5th, that's a lot of days of snow dumps. And with a lot of snow fall comes a lot of work. Our lift and maintenence crews have been diligently working to get all of our chairlifts up and running...safely. Outback has opened on more than a few occastions, and Northwest made a sneak preview last week and a season debut Saturday afternoon. As of Sunday, January 4, with the opening of Summit, every chair on Mt Bachelor was turning! Now that's ringing in the New Year right.

bk

Mt Bachelor would like to thank our premier shop sponsors of the Oregon Cup Free Ride Series. These 3 shops made it possible for us to offer the unbelievable cash prize pool of $2000 each for all 4 open class Saturday events. That's a whole lotta money. Big Thanks!

     

Located at 311 SW Century Drive in Bend, the Powder House is the closest ski and snowboard shop to Mt Bachelor. Offering soft goods from Giro, Scott, Orage, Rossignol, O'Neil, Northface, Obermeyer and more. Plus, Powder House has over 100 demos from Atomic, Salomon, Rossignol, Nordica, and Volant, just to name a few; AND the largest rental fleet in town. There is something for everyone. Be sure to stop in the night before you plan to head up to the mountain and pick up the latest demos or rentals. If you need a quick repair for your gear, next day tunes are available too. 541-389-6234

 

Skjersaa's, like Mt Bachelor, celebrates 50 years this season. Coincidence? Doubtful. Slated as Bend's original ski and snowboard shop, Skjersaa's provides the ultimate experience in shopping for your year-round needs. Pick up ski or snowboard rentals or have one of the many qualified shop techs repair your existing gear. Be sure to check out ski product from Line, Armada, Atomic, Fischer, Salomon, Dynastar, Tecnica, K2, Volkl and Nordica. Ski outerwear from Oakley, Cloudveil, Marmot, Mountain Hardwear, Spyder, and Orage. Snowboard hard goods from K2, Salomon, Burton, Forum & Rome. Snowboard outerwear from Bonfire, Burton, Roxy, Quiksilver, Betty Rides, Special Blend & more. Also, a huge selection of beanies, belts, watches, goggles, gloves & packs. Whatever your want or need, Skjersaa's is the place for you. Find them at 130 SW Century Drive in Bend or call 541-382-2154. Myspace here.

For nearly 130 years, Helly Hansen has provided gear that sets the industry standard for work, survival and sport. It began with a commitment to provide workers with more than just clothes, but protective equipment. By working closely with people who work and/or play outdoor more days than they are indoors to continuoulsy optimize technology and design. Helly gear is built to protect and enhance the performance of professionals, core athletes and enthusiast in the harshest environments on the planet. From base layers to thermal layers, to protective outer wear, Helly Hansen has you covered. Visit Helly Hansen Bend in the Old Mill District. 541-389-4100. 

bk

Some love from Snowboard Mag. Thanks to Aaron Hanlon for the post. Winter Shows Up At Bachelor

Blue Bird

Words/Photos: Aaron Hanlon / Photos:

So this season started out pretty slow everywhere but over the last two weeks we have been assalted with snow. Pow days are plenty up here in the NW and Mt Bachelor is looking really good after all this snow. This last week has been amazing as far as snow depth and quality. Epic. We went from zero to a 72" base in about two weeks. We have seen almost 150" fall and it looks like nothing but snow for then next week. I love it! Here are a few pictures of the mountain from the Bluebird day last week. The riding shots are from today. We had some sun and then the mountain socked in and started do dump again. A few of the pics are in the haze. If your thinking of road tripping well its definitely worth the stop. Come on up!

Potential??

Visit mtbachelor.com

Tony floating by!

Tony in deep!

Hanlow slashin!

Tony had plenty to smile about.

Method in the storm.

Storm riding is fun.

bk

It had been a long time in the making, but finally, our first Oregon Cup event of the season kicked off yesterday without a glich. The Open Class comp brought out the best of the best. Skiers and riders of all ages threw down under the lights at West Village for a chance at the $2000 prize purse. 

The jam got off to a slow start due to the massive amount of fresh pow that's been pummeling the resort for a week now. During the afternoon, some of the riders had to be pushed into the course by a few helping hands in order to slay the top flat or kink rail and still have enough speed to slide the bottom rail or the wall. But by the night time finals, the course had firmed up and the snow was fast enough for some sick tricks.

The competition was fierce, and in the end, a few lucky guys and ladies walked away a whole lot richer than when they started. 

A very special thanks to our premier shops: Skjersaa's, Powder House & Helly Hansen; and major support from: Under Armour, Solstice Supply, Giro, Dakine, Burton, K2, Volkl, Orage and more!!

Women

1st place and winner of $300 cash...snowboarder Ashley Thornton 

2nd place and winner of $200 cash...skier Moo Eakin

3rd place snowboarder Devyn Schnake

Men Ski 

1st place and $500 richer...Jonathan Chandler

2nd place, $250 winner..Mark Dvorak

3rd place...Joey Vandemeer

Men Snowboard

1st place, $500 winner...Colin Clarke

2nd place and $250 winner...Jarred Baker

3rd place...Blake Geis

 

THE WINNERS!!!

Banner Love

bk

The Dirksen Derby

Words: Scotty the body

The Dirksen Derby went down on Sunday, December 14th at Mt. Bachelor with Josh Dirksen hosting and he threw one hell of a contest. Bryan Fox, Austin Smith, Curtis Ciszek, Travis Yamada, Jason McCallister, Jake Price, Ahmon Stamps, Janna Meyen, and many other shreds came up to show their support and have a good time.

Jake Price

The snow was pretty slim, but the good folks at Mt. Bachelor, Josh and crew, worked around the clock to put together one of the funnest courses you can create with that little snow.

Bryan Fox

Jake Price got a little bit nuts, and crashed into a rock, ending up with 6 stitches in his head. However Jake is one tough dude, and came back from Ski Patrol just in time to get himself 2nd place. Austin Smith decided to rock the sit ski, which could have been the most entertaining part of the race. All and all it was a great time.

Austin Smith

A big thanks goes out to Josh Dirksen for holding a great contest, and inviting everyone out to his home town.

Special thanks to Dakine, Salomon, Bonfire, Scott, Fuel T.V., Exit Real World, Side Effect, and Skjersas's for the generousity.

Bryan Fox & Josh Dirksen

Mens Snowboard:
1st-Adam Haynes (23.06 seconds)
2nd-Jake "Minibike" Price (23.37 seconds)
3rd- Brandon Luzier (23.5 sec)

Womens Snowboard:
1st-Ashley Thornton (25.10 sec)
2nd-Janna Weatherby (25.59 sec)
3rd- Sally Butler (27.10 sec)

Groms:
1st-Gabe Ferguson (28.75 sec)
2nd-Kent Callister (29.59 sec)
3rd- Ben Ferguson (29.63 sec)

Token skier division:
1st- Brea Curnutt (24.63 sec)
2nd- Kendall Cook (25.0 sec)
3rd- Jackson Kelleher (25.55 sec)

Sit Ski division
1st- Austin Smith (36.47 sec)

Curtis

Here's what you need to know:

Saturday's Open Class event will have $2000 prize pool for PRO classes. $500 1st place men's ride, $500 1st men's ski, $250 2nd men's ride, $250 2nd men's ski. The female category will have $500 chopped up depending on the number of participants. Sweet gear for 3rd places in all division. 

The AM comp Sunday has tons of prizes, plus we will raffle off a new pair of skis and a snowboard from K2. Pick your day wisely based on your abiltity and desire for heated competition. May only compete in one or the other, not both days.

One more day to register at Helly Hansen, Skjersaa's or Powder House to save money and get it done ahead off time. Day of registration is in the lower level of West Village. Saturday's registration time is from 10am to noon. Even if you register ahead of time, you must come check in and get your bib. Sat open class rail jam starts at 1 pm and goes into the night for the finals. Sunday's registration is from 8 to 10am and will start at 11 am. Register early.

OREGON CUP PNW Rail Jam...be there.

The second annual Dirksen Derby rallied to a finish Sunday thanks to a much anticipated storm that dropped nearly 3 feet of snow on Mt. Bachelor over the past weekend.  The storm not only provided the Northwest riders with enough snowfall to open up the chairs at Mt. Bachelor, but also gave everyone a chance to take their early season frustrations out on a few unsuspecting bamboo gates.  After a long day of shredding pow and rallying turns the riders joined their inspirational friend Tyler Eklund for some punk rock and awards in the lodge.  Special thanks to all of the sponsors who donated to the event.   (Salomon snowboards, Dakine, Bonfire, Scott, Boost Mobile, Trendy Inc., Fuel T.V., Skjersaa's, Side Effect, Exit Real World, Downtowner sandwiches, Skull Candy, Rebound Physical therapy, and Mt. Bachelor)

2008 Dirksen Derby results:

Mens Snowboard-
1st-Adam Haynes (23.06 seconds)
2nd-Jake "Minibike" Price (23.37 seconds)
3rd- Brandon Luzier (23.5 sec)

Womens Snowboard-
1st-Ashley Thornton (25.10 sec)
2nd-Janna Weatherby (25.59 sec)
3rd- Sally Butler (27.10 sec)

Groms-
1st-Gabe Ferguson (28.75 sec)
2nd-Kent Callister (29.59 sec)
3rd- Ben Ferguson (29.63 sec)

Token skier division-
1st- Brea Curnutt (24.63 sec)
2nd- Kendall Cook (25.0 sec)
3rd- Jackson Kelleher (25.55 sec)

Sit Ski division
1st- Austin Smith (36.47 sec)

To see all the bachelor freeride team and groms in action check out the photo gallery here! All photos courtesy of Alex Nawrocky

  Curious about it? Here's some pictures to give you an idea.

 

With a lack of early season snow fall most of us have resorted to setting up make shift rails or jibs of some kind. Local shred dog Justin Norman was a prime example this past week making the most of our few inches (and getting the shot while he's at it!) Check out a couple photos from their sesh and get your stoke level up, winter is around the corner and soon enough we'll all be out there shredding!

Though the summer has been over for a while here are some pics of new features and summer work.  The new features are : Up Flat Down Box, Flat Down Box, 3 Flat Boxes of various sizes, Up Flat down Rail, Flat down rail, Down Flat Down Rail, 3 Flat Rails of varying size, New wallride, new lift tower jib, 4 loader tires, 2 spinning tires, and a few barrels.  If the snow keeps off I will keep building junk jibs.  Also the features got a new paint job and some plastic replaced. here are the pics the new wall, lift tower, and tire jib are not included in the pics

 

                                                       Metal

 

                                                           Hames

 

                                                 Early Summer

 

Tommy Tots

 

new paint

 

    New Wall back in september and others

Believe it or not it's that time again! The Annual Skjersaa's Rail Jam is going down this Friday night (12/12) starting at 6 pm with registration beginning at 2 pm. Basically, show up with 10 cans of food and get ready to send it. 40 snowboarders and 20 skiiers will be selected from registration so be sure to arrive on time. For those of you interested in spectating there will be a variety of amenities including; Live Music, a hard liquor bar, and a beer garden. The contest will consist of 5 features and will be executed in Jam format. Main line, get down there and catch some of the action! Good luck freeride and grom riders!

  + =

Money, money, money, money!!    

We said we'd make this event series better than ever, and now we intend to deliver. Not only did we totally revamp each event, add more dates, bring in more sponsors and swag, but now we've just sweetened the pot even more...

Each of the 4 Open Class Saturday events in the series will have a $2000 purse!!

Yes that's right. Just when it seems we are in an economic depression and a precipitation depression, we are offering something to help with your depression...

That means men's ski and snowboard categories first place winners will each walk away with $500!! Second place for each discipline will instantly become $250 richer.

And we didn't forget about the ladies!! The female categories will have $500 up for grabs split up based on number of competitors in the ski/ride categories. We need at least 6 women skiers and 6 women snowboarders to deliver the cash to each, but come on gals!! Get out there and shred!! BK

Got a note from team rider Mark Dvorak (hint hint rest of team) - he's been out and about shreddin what pow there is. Above 7000 feet it seems to be in decent supply (though not deep). He was up with some of the gang from Rage Films and sent in these shots. Photo credit AJ De Saint Phalle. AK

 

Thanks to Colin Clarke (for the heads up) and to Wes Coughlin (for posting it). Check out the latest goods from our jib weekend. AK

Mt. Bachelor 08/09 Season First Day from Wes Coughlin on Vimeo.

Over 100 jibbers of all shapes and sizes came out on Friday. Here's a recap. My back hurts. AK

Work is underway to get a rail park in place for this weekend. It'll be open Fri and Sat 10-4. Free with a season pass. $5 without one. More info soon about possible features. We ain't got enough snow to open so we're doing the next best thing. AK

In park news, Mt Bachelor parks were ranked number five in the nation last season by Skiing magazine.  The good folks at Skiing were nice enough to include a 1.5 page spread of team rider Mark Dvorak taken by Mr. Brian Becker of bend.  So make sure to check out the 08/09 Skiing Magazine Resort Guide.  Speaking of Mr. Dvorak, here is an ad for his ski sponsor (Faction) that was in the Freeskier Mag Buyers Guide this year.  Hames  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

   

     

 

    Also in the world of vids make sure to check out Actionhorse films' Pony Tale, which includes a full Bachelor segment, and features Team rider Austin Smith among our friends Hampus Mosesson, Jakob Wilhelmson, and Pat Moore.  These riders along with team rider Curtis Ciszek, Bryan Fox, and Louie Fountain showed up at Bachelor for a Snowboarder Magazine Super Session, which will be featured in one of the upcoming issues (either February or March).  Along with Pony Tale, footage can be seen in Mack Dawg's Down With People (with Austin Smith and Curtis Ciszek throwing down one of the best segments of the year), Forum's Forum or Against'em, and Volcom's Team movie.

    In other film news, make sure to check out Rage Films' Such Is Life, with an amazing segment from Mark Dvorak and Mt Bachelor footage spread throughout the film in many rider's sections such as, Ian Cosco, Matt Margetts, LJ Sternio, Mike Mertion, and Dylan Natale.  Local video gurus NC Productions and DOS Media featured Bachelor in their films and included team riders Skylar Thornton, Jonny Malanga, and Dan Bruton.

    Last but most certainly not least;shred legend, split board aficionado, team rider, and generally the most stoked person ever, Mr. Josh Dirksen has a new film out.  It takes a different perspective as it looks at the world of shredding through the hiking stand point and is properly named My Own Two Feet.  Make sure to check out Dirksen and other legendary shreds in this Leeward Cinema Film. The Infamous Dirksen Derby is December 7th, so make sure you make it out for a jolly old time.

 

Look for our team riders throughout the season in various publications.

Here are some pics

 Hampus

Hampus

Austin

Cosco

 

                                                          Mark

Skylar

After an extremely successful year of both filming and competition, Ben Watts was interviewed by channel 4's Gary Radnich in light of his breakthrough part with Warren Miller's most recent release, Playground. If you haven't had a chance to check this flick, you're missing out. KySty

Get to Skjersaa's, Powder House or Helly Hansen in Bend to register for this year's Oregon Cup freeride series. They are all locked and loaded wih registration info so get into the shops to sign up. You'll get one event free when you preregister for the series. Check out the Oregon Cup pages to the left of this page for all the details.

First event is a rail jam in West Village with night finals on Dec 20. Legit! AK

Check out freeride team duder Josh Dirksen and local shred dog Thayne Mahler in a little edit of bachelor's goodies. If this doesn't get you stoked you're either blind or need your pulse checked. KySty

Great snowboard video, or greatest snowboard video? AK

August 29, 2007

Regardless of where you live, you have probably noticed that change is in the air.   Fall is on the way, and with any luck winter won’t be far behind. Our team here at the mountain is feeling the change too; all of a sudden there isn’t enough time in the day.  Here are some of the things going on and some thoughts as we approach the new season:

Our Lift Maintenance crew has been working hard and has had a very productive summer working on and maintaining the lifts. We are implementing new changes from our lift manufacturer which we hope will reduce the number of stops on the lifts from last year. We feel that we will be able to address most of the problems from last season with these changes.  And by the way, thanks to all of you out there who have mentioned that particular issue to me in the past couple of months, just in case I hadn’t heard about it yet.  LOL

We have a new grooming manager this year along with a newly created position of Terrain Park Manager.  We also have a new Director of Human Resources and have expanded the scope of responsibilities for the Director of Mountain Operations. Hopefully it won’t take up too much of his blogging time. Coming up this season we will highlight these managers’ positions for you to give you a better understanding of what they do and how their jobs affect the rest of the mountain.

To our loyal season pass holders: I know we have asked for your patience many times over the years as we have changed systems and worked to keep the pace with new technologies. If we may ask one more time - please be patient with the online pass renewal this year.  The system put in last year is finally starting to work how it was envisioned. However, there is still quite a bit of work on the back end to complete this season.  Consequently, the online renewal process may be a little bumpy. We feel that once the pass renewal process has been completed that the next step (going through the gates) should work considerably better than last year. I know that isn’t saying much, but it will be better!!

And finally, yes our daily ticket and pass prices have gone up but so has our cost of doing business. We know you don’t want to hear that- it sounds too easy.  But there it is, and it’s the truth. We're not excited about the cost increase, but we are committed to providing you with the best experience possible.  It is important for you to feel like you are getting your money’s worth so that is what we are shooting for: every day.   

I believe we are going to have a great season.  Will we do everything right?  Perhaps not, but we will be here to listen and learn.  Some things may take longer to iron out than others, but if it affects your ski day I promise you we are working on it.  It is, after all, about skiing, riding, sliding and enjoying the snow.   

Blogs

PS: Carly made me do this.  Please don’t expect me to be a regular contributor to the blog.  I will be so much more productive (read- making your ski day better) if I spend my time in other ways.  I will be addressing your concerns I promise, but the more time I spend at my desk in front of my computer the less time I have to get in touch with what is going on outside my door.  If you really want to pick my brain, know what I’m thinking, or give me a piece of your mind, then let’s go take a run.

Weather reports – OK this is really it, I promise to include the R word (RAIN) if you use our weather reporting for what it is. Take a chance and just come skiing, or we can add 15 weather reports updates during the day!

Thanks for reading my rants. I really can’t wait for it to snow, be careful out there, see you on the hill.

Matt

Another winter season has come to a close!  The 6th Annual LibertyBank North American Pond Skimming Championships were once again a success!  This was made possible by the fact that so many enthusiastic spectators come out to cheer on our participants.  Your attendance is what really makes pond skimming an anticipated event year after year. 

Overall, we would like to thank everyone who came to ski and ride with us this season and all the hard working employees who made this yet another great year.  With almost 400 inches of new snow over the 185 day season, we are pleased that Mother Nature was once again kind to us.  We are already looking forward to what next season will bring.  Over the summer, we will not only begin improvements for next season, but we will also begin a lengthy audit of our Carbon Dioxide emissions with the goal of better understanding our CO2 footprint and how we will go about reducing our CO2 emissions.

Summer Operations start on Saturday, June 30.  This season services return to the West Village Base Area with lift service to the Pine Marten Lodge on the Pine Marten Express.  Sunset Dinners every Friday and Saturday will also return.  Come up and see us this summer and enjoy breathtaking views, hiking, dining and Disc Golf.  For more information on summer services visit the new Mt. Bachelor Summer Website!

Please note, the blog may be a little less active over the summer months.  Many of the year-round staff will be on vacation over the summer.  We will reply to your posts as soon as we are able.  In the meantime, enjoy your summer.  Come see us on the mountain for summer sightseeing and start praying for snow for next winter.

Mt. Bachelor Management

Another beautiful sunny day!  Spring really is here.  With Oregon's spring break coming to a close this weekend, it's time to start looking at spring pricing, operating schedules and plans around the mountain.  We are planning on staying open through Memorial Day, May 28th, 2007 with a blowout party of live music and the North American Pondskimming Championships.  (our most popular event of the season, come enjoy bbq, sunshine and ski all morning, watch the nutty event in the afternoon). 

Other great events on deck this spring:  Don't miss Riders for the Cure either, April 14th.   It's 100% charity with all proceeds staying local with the Sarah Fisher Project.  Wear your best pink costume, raise money and the more you raise the more you win!  Top 3 fundraisers walk home with new skis or snowboard!   An Ipod Shuffle too!   $10,000 raised last year, come up and ski/ride for a great cause.  Check web for all details.

The Race and Ace is on deck too, May 5th.  It was just written up in the New York Times travel section...get your team or test your skills as an individual skiing and golfing!  Where else can you get world class skiing and golfing in the same day and in May!  Right here in your own backyard!   check out raceandace.com or link from our homepage.

Now to the schedule:  Because numbers start dropping quickly starting on Sunday, there will be some changes in lift operating schedules starting on Monday. Please read below to find the schedule and keep in mind, this is subject to change.  If weather or business levels change dramatically the schedule could change...with more lift staying open longer (bring all your friends for the best spring skiing in the country), or more closing down if we can't meet break even numbers. 

For Spring:

Rainbow will be closed for the season.  Summit is open weather permitting.

Either Outback or NW will run depending on weather and conditions.  Please remember, NW will be scheduled to run which accesses Outback terrain so the full west side will be open and you will access it all through one lift. (Outback will be open next weekend due to the Masters Races being held off of Pine Marten Express, April 7, 8).

Carrosel will be closed, all beginners will have to use Sunshine Acclerator out of West Village. 

Snowblast tubing park will be open weekends only.  Scheduled to close April 15.

Nordic is scheduled to close for the season April 15th. 

Skyliner Express Lift last day April 22

Ski Corral last day April 22

Again, Mt. B scheduled to STAY OPEN THROUGH MEMORIAL DAY.

Summit season is scheduled to start Monday April 23rd.  We will shorten lift hours and start shutting down more lifts.  Skyliner will run the following weekend only for an MBSEF event (the Mayday races).  Then it will close for the season.   

Then Summit Express and Pine Marten Express will be running daily 7 days a week through May 28th, weather and business levels permitting.

We will be selling a Summit season pass available online at at our pass office starting April 16th.  It's $149 and is good for one person unlimited skiing April 16 to the close of season.

Daily ticket prices will be as follows for Summit Season:  April 23-close 

Adult:   $33

Youth:  $18

Teen:   $28

Senior:  $28

Racer:  $32

Adaptive:  $13

Other noteworthy schedule updates:

Daycare's final day of operation is Sunday, April 22.

Ski school closes at Sunrise for the season April 1. All daily ski school purchases must be done at West Village.  Privates will be held at Sunrise by reservation only.

Ski School closed as of Monday April 23rd:  Private lessons will be available by reservation only.

Supershuttle last day is april 22

PIne Marten Lodge will close April 15

As the article in the Bulletin noted, we have some of the best snow in the country!  Come up and play before summer is really here.

Carly

Today was a day that by looking at the Summit you would say that it would for sure be open.  That is until you looked at the wind speeds from the wind telemetry.  With the spring snow setting up firm in the early morning hours there was no snow plume to confirm the numbers that the meters were showing.  So a few of took a trip up to see what was up.  We made it into the top with the lift running at 1/2 ms, ( 5 is full speed ) and once we got out of the building we quickly believed the data we had been seeing and confirmed that the conditions would not allow us to open the lift. Todays wind was from the NW which is a more unfavorable direction for the lift than the southerlies of the past days.  Up on the peak we measured wind of 40-60 with a hand held anemometer.  Later in checking the data we found that when we were on top there was a lull.  The snow is looking good though and if we see some cold nights and warm days this week there may be some excellent corn snow conditions.  Thanks for skiing and riding with us.

Tom Lomax, Mt Bachelor Mt Manager

Mt Bachelor on 3-13-2007

John measuring the wind at 9065'.   John is the Snow Safety lead and leads the avalanche control program.

Kate checks the winds at Summit top.

March is here with a roar.  Today brought more new snow and afternoon decreasing winds that rewarded the hard cores with some afternoon Outback deep.  We have a base today of 142" compared to the 10-year average for today of 128".  The 10-year high for today is 220" ( 1999 ) wow, and the 10-year low is 61" ( 2005 ).  As usual, the weather is nothing but unusual.

Enjoy all the new snow,

Tom Lomax, Mt Manager

We  have been open now for 100 days on what is turning out to be a great snow year.  It’s also been a year with big swings in the weather patterns. We have seen periods of heavy snowfall, most of December, followed by a long high pressure event giving us a record number of Summit days by mid-February.  There are 93 more days of the season ahead and the next week looks to hold more cold temps and continued snowfall.  Last week, we had 2 days of rain snow mix that coated the upper lifts with a heavy layer of cocktail ice.  The lift maintenance crew did a great job of putting things back together, including 2 separate derailed towers on Summit, for a Sunny Saturday on Presidents' weekend.  All the new snow this week has filled in all over the mountain, covering up all the old layers.  Have fun out there and when the weather breaks and the Summit opens know where the catchlines are before you go, so you don’t waste your day and ours with an unplanned hike.

Enjoy, Tom Lomax, Mt Manager

Northwest lift top with a bit of ice

Summit lift clearing

Sunny Saturday on Presidents' weekend

After a wondeful telephone conversation with a local guest this morning, I thought I should write on exactly how our snow reporting works and why there are sometimes human errors.  He had called in frustrated with a report  given on Sunday.  I called him back and explained how it works and for the first time understood what happened and why it sometimes happens.  With that in mind, I thought I should explain it to everyone so it's no secret of how we report the snowfall. This topic has been a focus of all of us on the mountain invovled in reporting because I  know you all seek accurate and up to date information.  In fact, here are a few statistic for you regarding our snow report via phone and on our website.

For the month of December, we had 110,851 calls to our snowphone with a respective 108,237 in January.   Along with this, our current conditions page on our website was viewed 279,166 times in December and 104,209 views in January.  We know how much you utilize these services and how critical it is that we get it right.  You are all busy and choose your days to ski/ride often times based from our reports and its in our best interest to have it accurate so you ultimately have your best experience. Even if our report means that you don't come up at all, we'd rather you come on a day you'll be happy than come up and then go home frustrated.

So, here's how it works: 

1)   We have a graveyard security guard who starts off the chain of reporting by walking out to the snowstake at the base area to make the read. This stake is over near the Sunshine Acclerator lift. This intitial report is done about 4:45 am.

2)  At the same time, grooming looks at the mid-mountain stake to report snowfall and depth from up there.

--Each snow depth location includes a platform and stake.  The stake shows the total base and the platform is there to show what new snow has fallen.  Each time the report is given from the location, the platform is cleaned off so its easy to see and measure the new snowfall at the next report.  Therefore, the base depth is recorded and a measurement is taken of the snow on the platform to see if there is any new snow. 

3)  Our early morning snow reporters then call into security at the 5 am report and get all the information they need to accuratly update the website. If any of these steps don't happen, Janette gets a early morning wake up call to address the issue.   (IE.  Snowphoners can't reach security, etc) Another reason we want to get it right...no one wants a 4:30 am wake up call especially if its a day off. 

4)  The 7am, 8:30 am, 11 am and 3 pm are done a bit differently.  Patrol reports on the midmountain depths because they are up on the mountain already.  The lift operators at the bottom of Sunshine Acellerator check the base area for the other reports.  This is reported to the West Village information booth and Deb and her crew update the website.  Our snow phoners then go to mtbachelor.com to find the information including wind speeds from the live wind readers to update the phone.

So there you have it, that's how the reporting process works.  There are days in heavy storm cycles that we may update the website 10-20 times in between the set schedule if information is changing.  Rain, freezing rain, lift issues, winds, etc will cause us to update more frequently so you can see or hear what's going on.   Many resorts across the NW and country only update their reports once a day.  We update a minimum of 5 times daily and often times many more.  The more times we update daily the more chance for error, but we realize that our weather can be volatile and we want to communicate with our guests.

This system may sound easy,  or it may sound confusing.  Either way there are a few groups involved due to the hours we report and the locations of the reporting.  For consistency,  we instruct to report the same way each time on each day. 

For example, this past Sunday, we did not report any new snow for the 5 or 7 am reports and then at 11 am 3 inches appeared on the report.   This was an error, we had freezing fog on Sunday morning and had no new snow.   The person who read the snowstake and platform saw that 3 inches were on the platform.  Hmmmm....how'd it get there?  Wind drifts.  The employee could have waivered from the reporting instructions but didn't for consistency.

It's a fine line in keeping a consistent way to report since there are several parties involved and because we are 7 days as week 24 hrs a day, we have different people working all shifts.  Therefore we need consistency.  Sometimes we will report something different than the platform as we should have done on Sunday because it was obviously raining and not snowing, but the employee did follow the guidelines.  Other days, if we  waiver from those guidelines, we have had errors too because the platform may say 2 inches because snow has blown off when really there is 6+ new inches.  As all you locals know, Mother Natures blesses us with LOTS of snow..and as you know the windy days can be the best powder days, but it does cause some challenges with reporting. 

There have been other issues as well such as staff not showing up for work...sometimes just not taking the time to walk  out and read the stake because its "stormy" and therefore "guessing" at the new snow.  Needless to say, these staff members are no longer working here, but from this chain of events you can see how it ultimately effects the report  you get on the other end. 

I do hope you've noticed improvements  in our reporting this year...the automatic wind gauges and very few mistakes such as what happened Sunday.  Thanks for reading and calling and we'll continue to seek the most accurate reporting for you.

Ski and Ride on,

Carly Carmichael, Director of Marketing

Mt. Bachelor is fortunate enough to partner with The Center and TAI for a Health and Safety informational program for the second season.  The program started last season with posters and hand held Health and Safety Tip cards.  These posters and cards are again available this season through out the ski resort for guests and employees.  The cards, six in all, include tips on riding through the parks safely, preventing knee and back injuries, finding a perfect boot fit and pre and post stretching.

This season the program has grown to include free, yes I did say free, Health and Safety Seminars that correspond with the subject matter listed on the cards.  The seminars are facilitated by a doctor or a physical therapist from The Center or TAI.

,p>This Saturday Chris Cooper, a well know physical therapist from TAI, will discuss the importance of stretching before and after snow sports activities.  He will demonstrate some vital stretches as well as answer any questions or concerns you may have.  The seminar will again be this Saturday, February 24, at 10:30 A.M. in the West Village Lodge in the mezzanine above Cocoa’s.  Signs will be posted to direct you.  As an added bonus, Mt. Bachelor will supply refreshments and snacks.

There are two remaining sessions in the series which include one on Saturday, March 3 about knee injuries and one on Saturday, March 17 (both at 10:30 A.M.) about extreme snow sports and associated injuries.  The knee injury seminar will be conducted by Dr. Tim Bollom from The Center and the extreme snow sports seminar will be held by physical therapist Eric Coughlin with TAI.

For more information on the program or to download the Health and Safety Tip cards click here.

Hope to see many of you at the seminar this weekend!

Janette Sherman Mt. Bachelor Communications Manager

Living the Dream

Yes I am talking about the privilege of being able to clear our heads in this incredible environment on Mt. Bachelor.  To ultimately attain the maximum fun from this experience, requires some basic mental input on the part of every user regardless of preference of travel across the white crystal diamond flakes known as snow.  I’m talking about safety and awareness on the part of each and everyone of us.  Being responsible. Living the part of your dream here requires you to know and abide by the User Responsibility Code and the Conduct Policy of the Mt. Bachelor.  Expectations are for our guests to conduct themselves in a courteous and safe manner at all times while visiting us here at Mt. Bachelor.

User Responsibility Code
It is your responsibility to:
1) Stay in control.
2) People ahead or downhill have the right of way.
3) Stop in a safe place for you and others—visible
4) When starting downhill or merging, look uphill and yield.
5) Use devices to help prevent runaway equipment.
6) Observe signs and warnings, and obey all closures and the Ski Area Boundary. 

7) Prior to using any lift, you must have the knowledge and ability to load, ride and unload safely.

Rules of Conduct

Unacceptable conduct:
1) Using obscene or object able language.
2) Engaging in fighting, violent or threatening behavior.
3) Engaging in any act or omission contrary to law.
4) Damaging, defacing or destroying any Mt. Bachelor, Inc. property.
5) Allowing an animal to run at large or disturb any person.
6) Exhibiting obvious signs of intoxication.
7) Violating Mt. Bachelor policies including but not limited to policies posted.
8) Disobeying Mt. Bachelor, Inc. traffic and parking regulations.

Have a great experience and a fun time. Be courteous and respectful of others, so that we all have the same opportunity to experience the dream! You do need to be responsible and assume the consequences for your actions if you deviate from your responsibilities.

Please help us out by spreading the word and goodwill and enjoy the wonderful, great and healthy sport on this beautiful mountain of ours.

Karl Aldinger
Patrol Director
Mt. Bachelor, Inc.

Hello everyone!
When I arrived early Friday morning for the 17th annual Neighbor Impact Free Ski Day the mountain was alive with a buzz.  We had some guests who arrived as early as 6:00am! Everyone was ready to ski and ride.  How could we not all have been excited as we drove out of the fog to see Mt. Bachelor radiant with sunlight and blue sky?  Thanks to the lift maintenance, operations and patrol teams, we were able to provide our guests with an extra treat… lifts opened 30 minutes early. 

Neighbor Impact Free Ski Day, once again, was an absolute success!  Mt. Bachelor greeted more than 7,700 guests who donated more than 25,500 pounds of food.  I have to admit that each year we do this event, it is completely uplifting.  It is great to see the generosity of not only locals from the Central Oregon community, but from skiers and snowboarders from around the region.  Aside from our generous guests, we also had phenomenal help from the Oregon National Guard and Deschutes Juvenile Services.  These volunteers literally lifted all 25,500 pounds of food into trucks and then unloaded it all again at Neighbor Impact. 

I think the best feeling, however, is that this event made life that much easier for a neighbor in Central Oregon.  That is what community is all about.

Many thanks to everyone again for your participation!  See you on the mountain!

Janette Sherman
Mt. Bachelor Communications Manager

What can a beancounter do when the Mountain MANager is hogging the blog.. talk about the gates of course!  Actually I would much rather talk about Wanoga Way, since I was out there yesterday and it was awesome, so thanks to Tom and the team for getting that open and making an old accountant happy. 

To the matter at hand;

Since my early season update we have continued to fine tune a number of elements of the system together with our software and hardware vendors.  The Austrians have been out twice more, each time brining new parts and programming to improve gate performance.  Working with our own IT department changes have been made to:

• the way in which the gates communicate with each other (multiplexing)
• the speed of the initial turnstile movement
• the height of the turnstile assembly relative to the antennae
• the algorithm that checks the ticket/pass information

all of which are designed to squeak every last microsecond out of the whole process.

We have also learned more about the physical aspects of using the system and have changed the zip attachment to a type that has a fixed diameter to avoid the scrunching that occurred frequently with the previous zip affecting the readability of the chip.  We have also provided signage containing tips to ensure that customers set themselves up for the best experience.

Basically the best results are achieved when the ticket or pass is located outside your clothing, on the left side, at a height that hits the middle area of the antennae, and where the ticket or pass is not touching  and parallel (flat) relative to the white antennae.  Grabbing, waving or flapping the ticket or pass against the gate does not improve performance.  These movements cause the ticket or pass to be perpendicular to the antennae.    The ticket derives energy from the magnetic field which radiates in hemispherical fashion outward from the center of the device to create a small electrical charge that enables the chip to transmit its information, and the longer (and we are talking milliseconds here) the chip is in the correct orientation to the magnetic field, the quicker this charge can be achieved and the faster the gate will respond.

Our Austrian friends are also working continually with their own technology vendors, and as a result our tickets next year will contain an improved chip that requires less magnetic energy to activate, improving sensitivity and response time even more.  We will continue to work with them to ensure we have the most efficient and easy to use gate system possible. 

Last time I mentioned that many resorts are considering this type of technology and last week we were visited by a group from a major resort considering implementation of this system for next season. The IT department and I are getting calls from others all the time.   One benefit of the system that is little publicized is that we can use the information to assist in search efforts. This was put into effect back in December when a customer did not meet up with their family at the end of the day.  Together with the receipt from the purchase of tickets (held by one of the other family members) we were able to trace the ticket number and see the last lift ride taken by the missing guest to enable us to focus our search.

I have spent a lot of time observing people using the gates and the experienced users, mostly pass holders who have their pass in an armband on their left with the pass facing outward approach the gate and move swiftly through without even pausing.   The same results can be achieved by everyone, including ticket holders with some guidance and one or two runs.  Our ticket attendants are working to educate our guests and we will be adding more attendants to assist at busy times to ensure customers get the best results and the gates work seamlessly to provide access to the lifts.

As far as the attendants go, they do a tough job out there sometimes; they are there to help and also to ensure that only valid ticket and pass holders are out there using our lifts.  To that end we have given them some new "toys" to play with which some of you may have seen in operation already.   These  handheld devices enable them to monitor gate activity and screen for particular ticket and pass types.  They can be used to display ticket and pass information as each customer goes through each gate, including pictures, pass information etc.  This information will help identify obvious mis-matches between the information being read by the gate and the ticket or pass holder coming through, eg. Adults skiing on child or youth tickets, people using other people's season pass etc.   The handhelds can also be used (metal detector style) to scan for additional undisplayed tickets or passes on a person and display and capture information about those tickets. 

Our goal here is obvious; - we want to ensure every person using our lifts has properly paid for that privilege.   It will be good news to the vast majority of our customers that we will fully prosecute offenders for both theft of service and identity theft (for those people using others season passes with or without permission) Both of these are serious crimes and although it may seem like a game to some to "beat" the system - the consequences of being caught will be very real, and very permanent.   In the case of season pass fraud, there will also be serious consequences to the pass owners who may be lending their passes to others to use.   There it is - it would be pointless to sugar coat this message, so I won't.

After spending time with the ticket attendants I have an appreciation for the difficult job they do, and I would like to ask everyone to cooperate with them as they do their job.  Passes and tickets are required to be displayed, which many pass customers choose to ignore.  If you are asked by a ticket attendant to display or show your pass, please cooperate.  I have personally experienced several guests who have been aggressive and even rude when asked to show their pass as if this is some kind of intrusion.   Your responsibility as a pass holder is to comply with our guidelines for use and these are in place for a reason.   Our ticket attendants deserve to be treated with respect.  We will be strengthening our efforts to ensure that guests who are abusive to our employees will lose their skiing & riding privileges.  Remember this is meant to be fun, so go

"get some"  (regulars at Skyliner will appreciate this pun)

John.

Conditions were great this last week right through the weekend.  We picked up a few inches of new snow on Friday night that freshened up the groomers and let the Patrol open up the South side off the Summit for the first time this season.  The South bowls are offering a mix of everything from carveable rhime to some nice snow in the lower bowls above the catch line.  The West catch line is groomed from Larry Valley in, making for a easy trip back to Northwest lift.

            South side tips. 

• Obey closure and boundary signs. 
• If unfamiliar with the area ask for information before going. 
• Do not go alone. 
• Do not cross the catch line marked by bamboo poles with orange discs.

It looks like more Summit weather is headed our way this week so come on up and try it out.

Tracy in a 350 at sunrise on the way to groom Wanoga way.

Summit Ride

Looking back up the back side

South views

Thanks

Tom

Mt Manager

Today is the beginning of National Safety Awareness week for Ski Resorts across the country.  It's a week to raise awareness about Your Responsibility code and the responsibilities we all have when using the slopes to help make out slopes safe.  Please review the Responsibility code. 

At Mt Bachelor we have a long standing safety program called Slope Watch.  A guest can make a Slope Watch request to an employee and it will be communicated to the Patrol.  The Patrol will then do a safety run in the area reported educating and monitoring the activity in that area. 

Thanks, be safe, follow the code and enjoy the nice weather

Tom

Head's Up

Your Responsibility Code

Skiing can be enjoyed in many ways. At ski areas you may see people using alpine, snowboard, telemark, cross country and other specialized ski equipment, such as that used by disabled or other skiers. Regardless of how you decide to enjoy the slopes, always show courtesy to others and be aware that there are elements of risk in skiing that common sense and personal awareness can help reduce. Observe the code listed below and share with other skiers the responsibility for a great skiing experience.

• Always stay in control, and be able to stop or avoid other people or objects.
• People ahead of you have the right of way. It is your responsibility to avoid them.
• You must not stop where you obstruct a trail, or are not visible from above.
• Whenever starting downhill or merging into a trail, look uphill and yield to others.
• Always use devices to help prevent runaway equipment.
• Observe all posted signs and warnings. Keep off closed trails and out of closed areas.
• Prior to using any lift, you must have the knowledge and ability to load, ride and unload safely.

KNOW THE CODE. IT'S YOUR RESPONSIBILITY. 

Good morning.  Just a quick report here, temps are cold, and the new snow over the last 24hrs looks great.  All the lifts are running with light to no wind at this time at mid mountain.  Patrol teams are currently working on Summit opening control work.  Have a great day.

Tom

I must start by recognizing the incredibly hard working maintenance, patrol, snow removal and operations staff that have been putting in 16+ hour days all around the mountain clearing out the harsh storm damage. Happy days are here....we will be back to 100% tomorrow with Pine Marten and Northwest Express operating. Summit is already being prepped to get open asap as weather and winds permit.   The storm is forecasted to clear out tomorrow and high pressure and sun are expected for 10-12 days following just in time to celebrate Martin Luther King weekend. Temperatures will be very cold.  Please remember to dress appropriately and cover yourselves; neck, face masks etc. 

We have a great new locals day/event this Friday. Registration ends today, but Deschutes Brewery and Mt. Bachelor are offering a poker run.  It's $50 if you register by today, $50 day of and only $15 if you have season pass.  There will be locations around the mountain for you to pick up your best hand and Deschutes Brewery has great prizes!  Lunch and a soda or beer are also included in the Clearing Rock Bar.  You must be 21 and over but if you want to participate and play with us tomorrow, call 382-2442 and ask for Bobbie by 3 pm Thursday. 

Accelerator Sundays signups are Monday.  This is an awesome locals beginner program designed to be a "no excuses" learn to ski or ride program. We'll accept the first 200 registrants (100 for Sat and 100 for Sundays). This program is first time beginners only and for $90 you get three consective weekend lessons(sat or sun session) and equipment!   Phones open at 8 am  382-1709 if you or anyone you know is interested.

There are alot of exciting events coming up at Mt. B.  We were contacted this week by USSA (United States Ski and Snowboard Association) and were asked if we'd help out and host another U.S. Snowboard Grand Prix Feb 3-4. The event was scheduled on the east coast but due to lack of snow had to move it.  We definitely have the snow!  Anyway, we are on board for the 6th consecutive year has host for this exciting event.  With $86,000 in cash prizes and the $14,000 Superpipe 1st place purse leading the way, it's bound showcase the best snowboarding in the world.  The superpipe and Slopestyle will be the featured competitions. Many Olympic and US team athletes are already confirmed including Hannah Teter, Gretchen Bleiler, Lindsey Jacobellis,Tommy Czeschin.....still  waiting to get confirmation on Shaun White, stay tuned!   

Immediately following, Mt. Bachelor will host the  Chevy Revolution Tour offering competiton for competitors seeking the Grand Prix Circuit.  There will be a Slopestyle, Superpipe, and Bordercross. This event is February 9,10,11. 

Both event weekends are free of charge to view and are exciting to watch if you haven't seen them before.  Don't hestitate to call or check for details so you  can be prepared for weather, locations etc.

FREE ski day is in the mix too, minimum 3 cans of food and Friday Jan 26th is on us!  There are too many needy people in Central Oregon and it's our opportunity to help.   Please enjoy the day on us while helping other and if you don't ski or can't make it that day, spread the word to donate at our park and ride downtown that. 

I know this is a lot of information but the clearing coming.   We are up and running 100%, have TONS of snow, and there are many fun events and programs on the horizon!  Happy days are here....from The Liberty Bank Bend WinterFest to the Gala at the Riverhouse, there are endless activities around us in Central Oregon.  Get out and play!

See you on the slopes--Carly   

Due to cold temperatures the splice on the fiber optic line could not be performed this evening. We apologize for the delay and we will be up here tomorrow when temperatures warm to do the splice.

Red Chair will run Wednesday Jan 10 and Northwest is scheduled to operate. Thanks for your patience.

Rick Brooks, Director of Maintenance

What a wide weather week we have had at Mt. Bachelor! 

I wanted to give you all an update on the Pine Marten Express lift.  During an intense and lengthy ice storm on Sunday night the comm. and fiber optic lines on the lift were damaged.  Both these lines allow us to communicate from top to bottom on the lift and control some safety features on the lift. 

The lines are designed to hold substantial weight, but this storm was so intense that it built up a large amount of ice and broke both of the lines.  My crew spent the day Monday fixing the comm. line.  As I write this, a fiber optic specialist is traveling to Bend from Reno to fix the fiber optic line.  He will begin working on the line first thing Tuesday morning.  The repair is expected to take approximately five hours.  Once the line is fixed, it will need to undergo testing, meaning Pine will most likely open first thing Wednesday morning.

Thanks for checking in!

Rick Brooks, Director of Maintenance

As everyone who visited experienced this was a stormy weekend.  I didn't keep track of the accumulation totals but we have plenty of snow.  On Sat morning the road to the Mt. was closed shortly after a small number of staff arrived.  The blowing snow and lack of visibility caused the closure. The small early crew that made it up before the closure did a great job of getting things ready for the day.   It was definitely a interesting drive.  Some of the Managers then organized a convoy of vehicles and a few buses that were escorted up the road before it was reopened.  The winds and drifting snow only allowed for a few lifts to open at 9:30 with all the front side lifts open by late afternoon.  Thank you to all of the staff who hung in there through the confusion to get the Mt. going.  Sunday came with less new snow and more wind.  Lifts were running at slower speeds, 1/2 speed on a high speed lift is what standard fixed grip lifts run at full speed, and were opened and closed as the conditions changed.  The folks who braved the weather saw some good powder amongst the challenging weather conditions.  The good news from the weekend is that the Outback lift repairs are done and it is ready to go.  After some more morning ice clearing.  The bad news is that in the process of clearing Northwest lift we had wind/ice cause a derailment on a tower with damage to the tower equipment.  Repairs will start tomorrow in hopefully better weather.  At this point until further inspections are completed a time estimate is several days.  The forecasts looks for a short break in the weather tomorrow with additional fronts on Tues and weds.  Then there may be some longer term clearing on the way.  Have a great week.

Tom Lomax

Mt Manager

Here it is folks.   Temps dropped nicely today and the powder is looking great.  Bring your storm gear and enjoy.

Tom Lomax

Mountain Manager

The last few weeks at the mountain makes me think that being part of a ski resort operation is like being on the ultimate life accelerator. There is so much change and action day to day with weather, snow, operations and guests that every day you are looking at a new experience. We saw everything from sunny skies to 34" of snowfall in 4 days with a few big wind events thrown in for good measure. I saw our Patrol work as an incredible team on a heart attack victim with a positive conversion and a good outcome. We saw a scary day of avalanche sensitivity and I felt my stomach drop listening to a radio call from a patroller calling in a slide with another patroller in it who's experience helped him ski out to safety. When the snowfall stopped and the blue skies came we saw record numbers of eager skiers and riders on the mountain filling all aspects of the resort to capacity. Nearly 5000 cars filled the lots and eager skiers and riders filled the lifts looking to get in on the great conditions. The crowds overwhelmed our lift maze setups leading to some chaos in the lines which is definitely an area we are redesigning. The big day came with winds eliminating the Summit from opening and kept the Northwest lift from operating until mid day. The winds with the new snow made for some wild snow sculptures on the Summit requiring a 2 night grooming assault to get the winch cat to the top to get the front side runs put into shape. The effort paid off as I am sure many of Saturdays folks could attest to as they soak some tired legs from making laps on the Summit in the hot tub. In the end when all the powder settles and folks go back to their regular routines I hope that their experience at the mountain was what they dreamed of and is one that we will continue to live every day.

Sincerely

Tom Lomax

Mountain Manager

Wow, Mother Nature tested all of us today.  The amount of skiers and riders who "withstood" the storm was truely awesome!  Kudos to all of you diehards that gave it a go! 

The cold temperatures offered fabulous powder, but the winds that arrived were much stronger than forecasted. We had to run all lifts at slow speeds and completely shut down Skyliner and Rainbow.  As regulars know, the East Side is the mild side, but not today.  NW and Outback Express ran all day while unheard of gusts of near 80 mph were reported at the top of Skyliner. 

As I visited areas of the mountain today observing the overall attitude of our guests and staff, I was amazed at the smiles on everyone's faces.  With snow literally blowing sideways even at the base, the passion and determination of the skiing community was evident...I was thouroughly impressed.

The good thing about the high winds is that they are clearing winds...moving this storm right on out of here. Mother Nature got us today, but the forecast is for sunshine tomorrow and I tell you, our entire team will be there ready to go for all of you who are ready to come back for another day.  Hope to see you on the slopes tomorrow under blue skies and thanks for the inspiration I gained from watching all of you on the mountain today. 

Carly Carmichael, Director of Marketing

OK all you turn trackers.  click to this site and put in a bit of info and you can track your turns.  Actually you will email our computer wizards your name and pass number and they will send you back an access code.

[https:]

Have Fun

Tom

Another nice day in the mountains with the bonus of a late morning clearing with fresh snow for a Summit afternoon.  Tom

Summit looking up from Marshmallow

Northwest top looking from Outback lift

SuperPipe and Pine Marten Lift

New skiers

As I am writing this blog Pat Malendoski from Planet Snow Design is putting the finish passes on our Super Pipe.  We have hired Pat this season to help us with our pipe operation.  He has been consulting with us on the pre construction and started working on the pipe on Monday.  Sam Cordell, our grooming Manager put in a huge week getting the walls put together and he deserves a big thanks for his efforts.  Pat will continue to work with us throughout the season with both cutting the pipe and training our crews.  We should have the pipe open tomorrow Thursday 12/21 for the season.

Have fun out there.

Tom Lomax

Mt Manager

Pat and Sam in the 350 with the Zaugg doing some Zaugging.

Wow, what a day on the mountain today.  cold temps clear and sunny with almost no wind at 9000'.   The forecast is looking good for more of the same nice weather coming up this week.  A bit of a change from the 60+ wind on the Summit top Saturday.  We should see some great grooming this week with winching projects on the Summit and Northwest areas.  The Super Pipe is coming along nicely and I will give an update on it's opening soon.  Come on up and enjoy.

Tom Lomax

Mt Manager

Well today was a nice finish to a wild week of weather here in the west.  I think that we saw a little of everything but mostly some impressive winds as the pacific fronts blasted their way through.  The best part of the week was the big cool down on Thursday night with rain changing to cold snow.  Depending on what drift you checked, Friday came with a foot of nice dry stuff over the base.  We had high hopes of getting the west lifts going but Mother Nature had a different plan for us.  Outback turned into a ice cleaning fest as the west winds had put a sticky frozen layer on the chairs during the cool down.  Northwest had a fair amount of cocktail ice on the top towers but the chairs were in better shape.  Both lifts were cleared by late afternoon and will be up and running on Saturday.  It is looking like a great weekend with lots going on and good weather.  All the lifts are now scheduled for daily operations including Rainbow and Northwest ( except Red ).  We will be getting up on Summit as soon as we can to get started on the after storm cycle work so we can get it back open for you. Thanks for reading the Blog.  Enjoy

Tom Lomax

Mt Manager

Hi park fans.  I hope you have been able to get out and enjoy the great early season conditions that we have had this season.  Our park plans are moving along with 3 of our eventual 5 park areas up and running.  The Slope Style arena is nearly built out with a dozen rails in the rail line and 3 jumps with med and large take offs.  The first Mt Bachelor, Mt Dew, Slope Style contest of the season is coming up next Saturday 12/16.  For the contest there will be several rails moved to the jump line side below the 3rd jump.  The rail line in Slope Style looks to be getting heavy use.  For the first timer the "Chris Smith" signature Sunshine teaching park with small features is in off Sunshine lift.  This is  great place to get your park legs going or to take a lesson.  The i-Park with medium sized features is in with 5 jumps.  You can find this Park below the West Village getback off Skyliner lift.  Look for boxes to be added above the jumps as a new addition in this park.  The Air Chamber, which is the full length large sized feature park is the next build out project.  Look for the Air Chamber to start taking shape this next week.  The 430' long Super Pipe is also now under construction with a projected opening before Christmas week.  So get out there and have some fun and be sure to thank the hard working park crew that are out there shaping and taking care of the parks every day.  Thanks

Tom Lomax

Mt Manager

Here is some more information for you Summit fans.  On Thurs night we were able to get a pick cat and the Sherpa winch to the top.  This let us groom upper Healy Heights and Beverly Hills.  The winch cat worked amazing allowing for grooming both up and down hill in some very interesting conditions.  There are still some narrow areas but the top ramp is in good shape now and the runs should ski great.  The Patrol has also opened the hike to the bowl and it looked great today.  Hope to see you up there this weekend.

Tom

Summit and Northwest Open, The earliest in years! Dec 3 Update

Just wanted to jump on and give another quick update this morning!  The Lift Maintenance, Lift Operations and Ski Patrol crews have truly pulled together this year... making it the earliest opening of both Summit and Northwest in years.  Get up to the mountain and enjoy the fruits of their labor.

Many thanks to all,

Tom Lomax

Mountain Manager

Summit's Open,  Dec 2, Update.

Thats the radio call that I love to hear.  It means that the whole team of Lift Maintenance, Lift Operations and Ski Patrol have got the job done and the Summit is open for all.  The Summit and Northwest lifts were both opened for the 1st time this season on Sat 12/2. 

Tom Lomax

Mt Manager

NEW UPDATE 11 am Nov 30th:  A wet and very windy storm has moved in unexpectedly and it may delay the opening of NW and Summit.  We'll keep you posted, but the freezing on lift cables may be an issue.

Wednesday, November 29, 2006

With the break in the weather today we were able to get up on the summit to see where we stand.  It is looking good.  The lift maintenance team cleared the ice and inspected the lift for any damage from the past weeks storms.  The Patrol was able to then ride up the lift, hike to the top and carry out the avalanche control work in the main bowl.  They found the conditions to be mostly stable with a  large cornice build up and pockets of soft slab running down the bowl.  I got up on the weather tower on top of the Summit building and cleaned the ice off the wind instruments.  Even though these instruments are heated they become entombed in ice and rhime in the big storms.  Click here [www.mtbachelor.com]  to see the current
Summit temps and wind speeds.

The snow cover on the front side runs, Bev’s, Healys, and cows face looks very good.  The normal rock ridges are uncovered but the snow density is good with a soft wind packed surface.  The unload area at the top is a bit patchy from the wind but we can make it work. 
Weather permitting we should be looking at a Friday 12/1 opening which is early for Summit.  Tomorrow on Thursday we will finish up the lift and avalanche control work, set the catch lines, dig out the top terminal and put together and unload ramp.  All the Summit runs will be ungroomed due to the soft snow.  In order to be able to groom the runs we will build a climbing road that allows a groomer to get to the top.  When the climbing road is in then we can take the new 350 winch cat to the top, anchor it to the top pick point and groom out the top and the upper half of Beverly Hills.  We have another buried “pick point” about half way down Beverly Hills that will allow the winch cat to groom the lower half of the run.

When Summit open please remember the ridges are bare and there will be unmarked obstacles.  With the current conditions I anticipate a front side only opening with the hike and the backside closed.  Do not cross the catch lines which are the Ski area boundary.  These are a single orange and black striped bamboo with a orange disc mounted on them spaced to be easily visible from one another.  .  The east catch line will take you to the Sunrise getback.  Areas below the catch line are closed.  If you go below the catch line you  will loose your pass and will be charged for rescue costs beside the fact that you will be wallowing in chest deep snow.

On the Northwest Express we took advantage of the weather today to have Sam Cordell our groomning manager cut in the snow road to the top of the lift.  It is a dicey task due to the drifts, 30 degreee slope, and the possibility of a very uncomfortable ride down one of the bowls if you slip off  the road that you are building.  The road is now in and Lift Maintenance was able to get into the top to start clearing that lift.  They found very heavy snow and ice build up on the the chairs but no other major problems.  If all goes as planned the Northwest should be open on Saturday 12/2.  Thanks for your time and please post any questions that you might have.  See you on the Mountain.

Tom Lomax
Mountain Manager

Mt.Bachelor’s lift maintenance crew consists of 10 lift mechanics, 2 supervisors, 1 lift maintenance manager and I, Director of Maintenance.  We have two shifts that we work.  One starts on the mountain at 6 am when lifts open at 9 and at 5:30 when they open at 8.  This crew consists of at least 3 lift mechanics and at least 3 lift operators each day.  When they arrive, they work on starting Pine Marten, Sunrise and Skyliner Express.    Weather conditions determine which lift they start on.    A second crew arrives at 7 am and is made up of at least 3 lift mechanics. They assist in getting those lifts running or if those lifts are all up and running the go to Outback Express or NW.  This second crew stays until 5 pm or as late as needed to ensure everything is ready for the next day. 

Below is an explanation of three lift issues over the last couple of days. 

THE NEW PINE MARTEN EXPRESS UPDATE:  To help explain the problems with Pine Marten, I’ll start with pointing out the fundamental differences between the “Old” and “New” Pine Marten Express. With any detachable lift, the cable is at a constant speed while the grip releases from the cable, and with a series of tires gradually gets slowed so you can load.  It then accelerates up so it can reattach to the cable.  The original Pine Marten lift accomplished this with a complex use of gear boxes, drive lines and conveyor chains, which were all susceptible to failure w/o any warning.  The New Pine Marten Express accomplishes this same process by driving the tires directly from the cable.  The benefit of this new system is that there fewer moving parts that can fail.

For this type of drive system the adjustments in the terminal are critical. Prior to the load test, the adjustments were checked and adjusted to factory specifications by a Doppelmayr/CTEC specialist from Quebec.  The lift ran 12 hours prior to the load test and another 8 consecutive hours after the load test, and all ran smoothly. 

Yesterday afternoon, the anti-collision system automatically stopped the lift when it detected that chairs were not properly spaced.   It became apparent that some of the settings in the terminal were not optimal for the type of weather conditions we experience. We made some adjustments and continued running the lift. We have contacted Doppelmayr/CTEC for assistance.  There is a technician arriving today (Saturday) and another one no later than Monday to evaluate the adjustments and how our conditions affect them.  The mountain closed and the mechanics stayed until 6 pm re-spacing the chairs so the lift would be ready for Saturday.

This morning (Saturday), our start up crew arrived at 5:30 am as they do every day to start the lifts.  After running Skyliner Express and Sunrise they got to Pine Marten and encountered a problem with a safety switch that would not allow the lift to run. With Doppelmayr representatives on the phone, it took several hours to figure out the problem. 

Once we started loading guests, we encountered similar problems as the day before with chair spacing and were to be forced to run at 60% speed to eliminate any stops relating to the spacing issue.  Doppelmayr technicians will be here tonight to help us solve the problem and get the lift running as it should.

OUTBACK EXPRESS UPDATE:

Thanksgiving Day:  Outback opened at 9:30, we ideally would have run Outback a few hours prior to opening.  We did not get the run time the day before so instead of not having it open on Thanksgiving we went ahead and ran several revolutions, as we normally do and opened it up to the public.  Each chair is numbered and a revolution is when a single chair runs all the way up and down, this takes 16 minutes per revolution.     During the pre-running, lift operations were knocking ices off the chairs and pulling down chair pads.   We fixed a few chair spacing problems which were caused due to icing and then determined that the lift was ready to operate.  After we opened the lift, we started experiencing problems with the some of the grips (clamps the chair to the cable) that had an excessive amount of snow and ice build up.  This was causing the grips to not operate normally and damaged the operator arm roller (on a detachable grip, this mechanism opens and closes the grip) requiring us to remove those grips from service.  This causes the lift to stop for 1-2 minutes each time. 

On Friday, there were still a few operating arm rollers that had been damaged and had not been noticed.  The lift was running and we noticed some additional rollers needed replacing so we had to stop it to do so.  The question we face is do we open the lift knowing we may have to stop it a couple of times for a couple of minutes each?   Or do we delay longer, a ½ hr to an hour to open the lift.    We tend to want to put guests on the chair knowing that they may experience a couple of stops rather than delaying the opening.  Keep in mind, we will never open a lift that we don’t feel is safe due to weather or mechanical issues.  A stop on a lift does not mean it’s not safe.

Outback has run smoothly since. 

SKYLINER EXPRESS STOPPAGE ON FRIDAY:   Here’s what happened.  An individual loaded a chair on one side causing the chair to be angled. This is normal. At the top, an unexpected gust of wind, exaggerated the angle causing the chair to not enter the terminal properly. The safety switch automatically stopped the lift.  Maintenance was called and dispatched a mechanic that was stationed at the top of the lifts.  When he arrived he discovered that the chair was jammed in the terminal and had a broken running wheel which didn’t allow the grip to open and close as it should.  Additional mechanics arrived and we were able to move the chair through the terminal far enough where we could then use a special tool to close the grip onto the cable by hand.  This process took roughly 15 minutes.  At that point, we needed to get the damaged chair to the bottom terminal to make one more repair, so we continued to load people letting them know there would be an additional stop.  That repair took less than 5 minutes and we started running the lift again.  Rather than keeping the lift stopped for a longer period of time, we ran the chair one full revolution with no one on it and then pulled it off for maintenance resulting in another 2 minute stop.   

We really monitor how the wind is blowing the chairs around and we decrease the speed of the lift as wind increases, but it’s hard to account for gusts. 

Another option would have been to run the lift so that each chair could unload with guests and not load anyone else until all repairs were done. This would have resulted in a complete stoppage of roughly ½ hour, after the already 15 minute delay of manually moving the chair through the terminal.  So, those in the lift line would have had a 45 minute delay, or as is, were able to load but experienced additional stops. 

No one is more concerned with lift stoppages than me.  I have a dedicated staff that gives 110% toward the safety and reliability of our lifts.  I look forward to discussing any issues you have and answering any questions. 

Rick Brooks

Director of Maintenance

Since we opened for Ski for Schools day last Friday our new All-RF gate technology has been in operation.  For those of you who were here as a guest or employee last season you will notice that with a few limited exceptions the gates are working faster and more reliably this year.   The RF “hands free” validation utilized by our season pass holders last year is now being enjoyed by our ticket holders, eliminating the problem we had last year with the barcode ticket readers filling up with snow. This is timely given our recent weather. 

The technology we have implemented this season is the first of its kind in North America, demonstrating Mt Bachelors ongoing commitment to innovation.   The system is made up of two main components; firstly "the gates" which are the latest and greatest harware from Europe, where gates are used much more extensively in ski resorts.  These we get from a company called Axess based in Salzburg, Austria.  The second part is our ticketing software, which is part of a resort-wide operating system called RTP, which is developed in Colorado and is the leading software used by ski resorts across North America.  Mt Bachelor is the first resort to combine these two systems in the way that we have to deliver complete hands-free, smart card technology.

However as with most leading edge technology there have been some early season glitches to work through and I would like to talk about some of these and what has / is being done to fix them. 

Firstly – The Gates..

The gates themselves are working well, there have been some intermittent problems with inconsistency in response times and functions, particularly at Skyliner – the locals favorite.   We reset and applied some new programming to these Thursday morning, and since then they seem to be working well.  Our Austrian friends are monitoring the gates remotely, and gathering data they hope will enable us to improve some configuration settings and speed up response times even more tomorrow.    A certain amount of fine tuning can only be done after winter weather sets in and data is gathered about gate performance as more and more customers use the system.  As we learn more we are able to make adjustments to improve performance, and we will continue to do this until we are totally satisfied with response times and consistency.

Secondly - Tickets..

Tickets are working infinitely better than last year, including the new ride ticket on the more durable "credit card" style media.  The gates are providing better feedback than ever before to the ticket attendants and to our customers to validate and control access more effectively.  The gates read out the rides remaining, show when the ticket was last used, when it expired and a range of other useful information that was not readily available to us in last years system.  Soon ticket attendants will have handheld RF readers to provide even greater assistance in checking both tickets and passes. 

Gate response times for tickets are affected by the following things:

1. Positioning on the body – needs to be on left side, the higher the better.  (the sweet spot on the reader is the stylized bull’s-eye right in the middle).
2. The way in which they are attached, the more they are scrunched or twisted the slower they seem to read.  Unfortunately the hole positioning and the zip ties we used makes it hard to attach without a little bit of that, which is why we are giving out two zip ties.  We are looking into alternative attachment methods to address this.  The flatter they are the more easily they can be read.
3. Moving around – the “wiggle” factor is not necessarily better.  It seems as though positioning the ticket around the sweet spot 4-8 inches from the reader surface and waiting is the best recipe for success.  Grabbing the ticket and trying to pull it or swipe it or touch it to the reader flexes the ticket and can reduce the performance.

Overall the system is designed to be a walk-up, brief pause and walk through system. 

The other thing if you are pressing right up against the reader side, the turnstile “Eye” doesn’t always see that you are present and waiting to go through.  Standing square toward the turnstile is the best approach here.  That’s why its important to have the ticket on your left side.

Finally – Passes…

There is varying information on this score.  It seems as though between 95% and 90% of passes are working great.  That means 5-10% of passes have to be taken back to the season pass office for corrective action.   For those of you affected by this, I am very sorry for this inconvenience and will offer some explanations below.   Even 1% is 1% too many. Many people, here and in Colorado have been working 24x7 to sort through these issues and get fixes to as many people as quickly as possible.

The main challenge for us in implementing this new solution as far as passes were concerned was the size of the task for and the time needed to build and integrate the hardware and software. We began working on this before the season ended last year, but we knew that delivery of the solution was always going to come after our season passes went on sale.  Also, we wanted to stand by our position that passes issued last season would be good to be renewed for this and any future year.  (when we made that decision we didn’t know we would have to more or less toss out last years system and start again). 

Whereas totally new passes printed today are encoded as they are issued, all the passes printed prior to about 2 weeks ago (when the software was delivered), were not encoded with the information the gates now use to validate and roll the turnstile.  So – apart from building a completely new system we had to find a way to bridge the gap from our old “dumb” card pass to the new “smart” card pass.

We did this by converting all the current (and prior if you renewed) years sale data into records which we loaded into each gate so that the first time a pass presents at a gate it is encoded with the product as it goes through.   In doing this we always knew there would be an error rate.  We couldn’t actually test the process for 100% of the cases because that would require every pass printed prior to two weeks ago to be physically present, since each pass has its own unique RF ID code.   MT Bachelor employees and some of our friends passes were tested and the vast majority worked, but some did not. 

At this point we believe there is about a 95-90% success rate, which is slightly better than we were anticipating.  It is very unfortunate for those affected, and again I apologize, however the alternative was asking every pass holder to wait till the software was delivered two weeks ago to come in again for a completely new pass.   For obvious reasons this was not a real alternative.

For those of you affected by this, there was another complicating factor, we did not receive the tools to diagnose the problems until Wednesday (another thing that had to wait till we had operational data to work with).  Once we had those tools, about 6 of us worked till late in the night and fixed about 50% of the cases we could fix with the tools we had.  On Thursday we received more tools needed to fix the remaining backlog of passes, and these should be corrected by the weekend.  We are also now able to respond much more effectively and hopefully find and fix some of the issues before they occur.

For the first two days we were printing replacement passes for customers whose pass didn’t work, and unfortunately we found out that in many of these cases the replacement pass wouldn’t work either. That’s because our system has controls to ensure only one valid pass can be in existence for one customer, and the replacement wouldn’t work if the system still thought there was another valid pass out there.  This means that affected customers were sometimes twice affected, and again I apologize for this inconvenience.  Basically until we got these tools delivered over the last two days we were flying blind and trying different things just to get people going. 

Now, some explanations as to why some passes don’t validate and encode first time, while some work perfectly.

1. Because we offered on-line renewals for the first time and the process was not that easy to navigate (something we intend to have smoothed out for next year) some customers purchased a new pass instead.  This means the system was expecting you to come in and have a new photo and pass issued.   Last years pass wont work.  This is the biggest category.
2. Some customers inadvertently created an additional profile for themselves on-line rather than logging onto last years profile. In these cases the gates cant resolve the duplicate customer issue and we have to manually clear this up in the database before we can get your pass to work. 
3. Another group are customers who successfully renewed on-line to their last years pass, but then couldn’t find it, or decided on a new photo and came in for a replacement pass.  This doesn’t work for the reason identified above – the gates are waiting for your last years pass.  However, now that there are two passes, it is probable that neither of them will work until we manually correct your customer profile.
4. Some passes are just “broken”. Basically the chip inside is worn out or broken especially if it was in use last year.  It could still have worked with our “dumb” system last year, but may not be able to be encoded with all the new data this year, so needs to be replaced.   These passes are very robust, however some of them get an extremely tough workout. 
5. Every now and then the chip inside is bad from the beginning (about 1 in 750 to 1000), these would still have worked last year and our system had no way of knowing then if the chip worked or not.  Now we know if a chip is bad when we go to issue it, so no new passes would go out this way.
6. Some passes contain testing data on the smart chip from the manufacturing process.  When we print passes now we clear the chip first before we load our data on it.  Last year, since we werent using the smart chip, we didnt need to do this.  In these cases the gates are uhable to overwrite the testing data, but our equipment in the season pass office can clear the data and re-write the proper information on the chip. 
7. Some family transactions were scrambled, due once again to fairly complicated navigation required in our e-store for allocating passes to other friends and relatives.   This data was particularly difficult to convert cleanly, in some cases preventing the passes from encoding.

In all cases we now have the tools to diagnose and fix problems in Season Pass.  The season pass staff are delighted now to be able to deliver real solutions and are committed to getting you out skiing or riding in this great snow.  I would like to thank them, as well as all everyone else including the ticket attendants who have worked extremely hard through this last week troubleshoting these issues and helping to communicate with our customers.   We are all here to help, so please tell us if you have a problem with your pass, we will get it fixed so you can enjoy the season.

      John McLeod

Controller.

Welcome to the Bachelor Blog.  We are excited to offer this communication piece of our website and look forward to offering up to date information on a variety of topics.  We  encourage you to provide your honest feedback as we will provide honest answers from different managers around the mountain. We do have some rules so please respect them if you’d like your comments posted.  Comments will not be posted if they include:
1) Profanity
2) Personal attacks 
3) Off topic comments. 
This is a new feature of our website and to some extent we’ll be learning as we go.  Thanks for your involvement and for caring enough about Mt. Bachelor to take the time to share your thoughts. 

Cordially,

Dan Rutherford
President and General Manager, Mt. Bachelor Inc.

PINE MARTEN UPDATE:  Pine Marten will not be running today, Friday November 17th.  This new lift needs load testing and the process will not be complete for opening today.  Safety is our first priority and we are not going to shortcut on anything regarding lifts.  This lift has been under construction since we closed for skiing.  Take down of the old Pine Marten Express started June 1st and there has been a crew from Doppelmayr here daily working on this construction.  It's not an easy process, it's a huge project.   Our crews are committed and were up at the lit until 3 am last night. It became clear at that point that they could not rush the test and would wait to complete the test on Friday and hold off on opening the lift until Saturday.  Thanks for your patience, we are excited about this update to our state of the art lift system. Stay tuned to our snowphone and website for other updates.

SEASON UPDATE

We will be opening this Saturday, Nov. 18th.  That means Ski for Schools will be Friday the 17 and all skiers and riders will have to have a purchased ski for schools ticket.  Season passes do not work because this is a 100% charitable day with all money going back to the Bend and Redmond School Foundations and directly to programs and activities that our local youth cannot afford. You can buy your tickets in advance at all ski shops, McDonalds and other downtown locations in advance for $15 or at the window day of for $20.  We hope to see you on the mountain skiing, tubing or on the XC trails and supporting our community at the same time.  Last year we raised over $15,000 and we hope for $20,000 this year. 

The cats are on the hill and have been over the weekend track packing which is different from grooming because it strictly packs the snow down to help solidify the base.  The snow that has fallen is great for the base because it’s wet, but the winds have been very high and although we have 28 inches at the base, mid mountain coverage is not as deep or extensive.  Our crews are and will be out there working very hard manually moving snow to provide safe coverage for opening. 

Pine Marten Lift has been replaced with brand new technology.   Mt. Bachelor was one of the first to install high speed quads and now we are replacing them due to the volume and usage of this lift.  You will notice the different look as soon as you arrive.  This is a state of the art lift allowing us better service and detectability of issues.

As most of you know last year Mt Bachelor implemented new gate and ticketing technology, which for a variety of reasons did not prove as successful as we had hoped.  The main problems experienced last year were as a result of snow building up within the gate readers affecting the ability of the readers to scan the bar-coded tickets, and weather affecting the ticket and pass validation process which required the gates to communicate with a central server every time a ticket or pass was read.

This summer we have worked intensively with our gate vendor (an Austrian company called Axess) and our software vendor (a Colorado company called RTP).  Axess leads the industry in Europe in gate technology and RTP leads the US in ski resort management technology.  In fact every POS on our mountain, from tickets to the ski school to the bar use the same system – which is a great advantage from a management perspective.

The first difference you will notice is that we have committed to an all hands-free RF (radio frequency) experience. Every ticket and pass will be RF meaning no more fumbling around trying to insert the ticket into a reader. Just walk up to the gates and it will “see” your ticket and if its valid the gate will open.

The second difference is less obvious but just as important – with the introduction of 100% RF media, we have also begun encoding every ticket with the product information.  This means that the gate readers (the big yellow wings are actually antennae) can “see” every detail of the product you have purchased and determine if it is valid for today, without the need to communicate with a central server for validation, eliminating the network bottleneck that sometimes occurred last year. Passes will now be encoded the same way.  In other words, the gate can make an instantaneous decision to roll, or stay closed, so gate delays should be a thing of the past. The gates will also display more useful information to assist guests and ticket attendants if for some reason there is a problem with your ticket or pass.  Ticket attendants will be equipped with RF readers to further assist in troubleshooting.

The gates are also able to write back to a ticket or pass, for example if it is a ride ticket, each time you pass through the gates, they actually write back to the ticket deducting a ride, which brings me to one constraint of the new system.

Since the RF technology does not require insertion of the ticket into a reader, ride tickets have to be “closed” for a period of time to avoid inadvertent deduction of rides from the ticket as you pass it back, or even if you stand close to the gates for too long.  Consequently the ability to share your ride ticket “within the queue” will no longer be available.   Of course the ride ticket will still be transferable throughout the day if you wish to allow someone else to use it while you rest, or between days and will still be valid for 3 seasons.

If you have a ride ticket from the old ski-data system from 04-05, or last years season, which was on the new system, but unfortunately not on RF, you will have to come in to the ticket window again to exchange it for a new RF ticket.  We apologize for this inconvenience, but in order to move to a 100% RF environment, this had to be done.  We absolutely believe that the difference you see in the performance of the gates will more than make up for the inconvenience.

This technology truly puts Mt Bachelor at the forefront of ticketing technology amongst US resorts.  Our history of innovation, from the excellent lift system, to the systems and practices we use to operate our mountain, not to mention our great snow continue to make Mt Bachelor the best resort in the Northwest.

With our opening this weekend, the operating schedule is planned as follows.  Please keep in mind, this is all weather permitting.

Lifts open at 9 midweek and 8 weekend and holidays.

Opening weekend:  Pine Marten, Skyliner, Sunrise, and Sunshine.  Outback and Rainbow will open If snow permits. Pine Marten Pinnacles and bathrooms open, Sunrise Lodge and West Village Lodge open and full service.   

Midweek schedule:  Pine Marten, Skyliner, Sunshine, Outback (if snow permits)  Pine Marten Pinnacles and Bathrooms open, West Village lodge open full service, Sunrise Lodge closed.

Weekends and Thanksgiving holiday:  Pine Marten, Skyliner, Sunshine, Sunrise, Carrousel, Outback and rainbow (snow permitting).  Pine Marten Pinnacles and bathrooms open, Sunrise and West Village lodges open full service. 

Sometime in early to mid December we will be full service in all lodges and lifts.  We will open Summit and NW as soon as enough snow provides.  The winds on summit at this point are preventing snow from sticking much and NW runs to our lowest elevation so it takes longer to get enough snow to open out there as well.  We will open both as early as possible.

We did hear the frustration with the changes last year with the Sunrise Lodge schedule.  We understand the desire to have every inch of mountain open every day, but early season numbers just don't warrant the expense during the middle of the week.   It's simple supply and demand.  We did change some this season by opening the lodge every time the Sunrise lift runs.  And as soon as numbers pick up, we will open the lodge and lift 7 days a week to meet the demand. 

Mt. Bachelor is unique in its cone shape and 360 degree access and it makes for a great ski experience, but it also makes us very spread out with West Village and Sunrise being 2 miles apart.  We have more lodges than most ski areas because of our layout and therefore much more expense.  We must manage our resources wisely so we can sustain our business over the long term and provide funds for reinnvestment and improved facilities.

We are reintroducing Ski School to Sunrise Lodge starting the Thanksgiving Holiday.  Sunrise Ski School will operate early season when the Sunrise Lodge and Lift are running.  Private ski and ride lessons and Little Rippers are available opening day by reservation only.  West Village Ski school and all other lessons Thanksgiving day and be open for the season.

Daycare will open at West Village Lodge Thanksgiving day and will remain open 7 days a week through spring. 

The XC center will open Friday as well and we are hoping to get 25K of groomed and tracked trails for you to enjoy.

Snowblast Tubing Park opens Friday and will remain open daily through Thanksgiving weekend.  It will then be open Saturday and Sundays only until mid December when it changes to its normal Thursday-Sunday schedule.

The Super Shuttle will run starting Saturday and will run straight through the Thanksgiving Holiday.  It will then be running weekends only until December 16th where it changes to its full schedule that will continue through mid April.

I hope you enjoy the new website, we’ve addressed what many of you have asked for in regards to weather.  We now have live weather sensors around the mountain and have a forecast for you.  These show the winds in MPH as well as what is in the forecast.

Thanks for your support of Mt. Bachelor.  See you all on the mountain soon.

Dan Rutherford