What happened to our snow........

Even with this unseasonably warm weather I have not dipped a paddle in any water yet, even though I am itching to try out my new three piece Northern Lights Greenland stick that the BadHatter and I purchased at Canoecopia. Now that he owns a dry suit he is gloating about being several open water rolls ahead of me this season already. A packed travel schedule and complicated real estate transactions have pretty much kept me off the water, although I hope that will change tomorrow night. The end of last week and the weekend found a group of us in Portland for our annual Frozen Four hockey trip. Serious puck fans might point out, "But isn't that next weekend?". Yes it is, but friends don't let friends do hockey in Florida. Nice site selection job NCAA. No, we decided to take the Empire Builder out to Portland, OR for a pub crawl. What we had not planned on was a trip up the mountain to check out some serious snow depth.

The mission, in addition to checking out the brewpub beers in the historic Timberline Lodge, was to shoot a video for No1Son's company, PDW. Content and release date are top secret at this time but we did need the snow and found plenty of it. I think most of our snow fell on Mt. Hood before it even got close to us. Aparently March snowfall on Hood was over a dozen feet. Champagne Powder is famous in the Steamboat area. Cascade Concrete is the name of the snow around Mount Hood. Superb for snowball fights but a person better have some wide skis and strong legs. We snowshoed up to the sight of the shoot, three pairs of showshoes for 'the talent' and the rest of us following afoot. As the heaviest member of the followers I managed to go through the crust up to mid thigh on at least a dozen occasions. The file is too large to upload, but click here for a video of my attempting to get to the bottom of the snowpack. An almost five foot trekking pole and a three foot arm did not reach the bottom.

I may have said this before, but this is the last snow post for the season. I've got a bit of work on a couple boats that needs to get done but most of the fleet is operational and needs to get some hulls wet in the near future. It is time, actually past time, to hit the water.