WFW - Tumalo Mountain Morning

The packed snow squeaked beneath my snowshoes as I left my car and made my way across the parking lot to the place where I would step off the trail, and head uphill.  Soon the parking lot would be filled with the sights and two-stroke smells of snowmobiles off-loading and heading out.  But I would be oblivious to them.  Once in the woods, outside sounds are quickly muffled. 

As I stepped off the track, the squeaking sound was soon replaced with a nearly imperceptible whoosh of powder being displaced with each step.  Forty yards in, this was the only sound, other than my breath. 

The sky overhead was a study in pastel blues – translucent Caribbean to the east; fading to azure to the west.  I could see the sun kissing the icy treetops, but since my route began on the southwest slope of the mountain, I would be in the shade for at least the first hour of my walk. 

After a few minutes, I looked back to get my bearings – not that it’s all that easy to get lost going up a cinder cone … if you’re heading up hill, you’re on track.  Behind me, across Century Drive, I could see the chairlifts on Mount Bachelor begin to move; not holding any stylishly-clad butts for another hour or so – just cycling through so the operator could confirm they work properly, flip the seats down, and brush off the night’s accumulation of snow and ice.  The Sno-cats were on their last overnight run; working their way down the mountain, leaving wide corduroy paths in their wake—ego-snow—which would lend the first skiers of the day a false sense of competence, before warming temperatures and accumulating moguls replaced those delusions with cold reality.  

I could see each breath as I exhaled, little puffy clouds of water vapor, suspended in front of me as they froze to micro-crystals.  The sense of aloneness was so profound – so welcome.  After two days of lift lines and rapid descents, a morning of measured steps and solitude was the elixir I needed.  An airliner passing above left thin cloudlike contrails in its wake, as it traversed the sky.  I paused for a moment to consider where it was heading, and the lives of the people on board, six miles high, traveling at nearly the speed of the silence we shared. 

The sun began to work its way down the nearby trees, slowly melting the ice that coated each branch, and hung from them in icicles.  Every so often a chunk of ice would break off a branch, and hit with a thud against the branch below, before falling into the snow.  As I continued, this percussion became more frequent, like a percolator beginning to brew the morning coffee.  Finally, the sounds were almost constant – like a thousand Andean rain sticks.   It was other-worldly.  I looked around, and realized there was nobody else; the concert was just for me.  Then, as rapidly than it had built to its crescendo, the sounds diminished; becoming more random ... less frequent ... then finally not there at all.  

A minute or so after the concert ended, as I had returned to my waking dream state, I heard what sounded like a gunshot.  I spun to look in the direction of the sound, and saw powder still suspended from where a branch had broken off and fallen into the snow.  The tree stood within a grove of standing dead trees – many so desiccated that the water which freezes each night is ultimately all that holds the branches to the trunk.  finally comes the morning when the ice thaws, and the branch gives way, to the tune of a broken-bat single, as it drops to the ground – returning whatever meager minerals and nutrients it retains to the sparse earth, whence they were drawn.  

This thin forest of standing dead trees stood as they had for decades; ancient ghost-sentries—their forest green uniforms long-since faded to gray, and fallen away—manning their posts in death as in life; the vanguard frontier of the losing battle against climate change.  They now resemble rows of abandoned scarecrows, or crumbling crucifixes – standing where they had vicariously atoned for mankind’s unrepentant sins against nature; bravely facing our longer, hotter summers, and decreasing precipitation; finally falling to those most relentless six-legged horsemen of the apocalypse – the pine bark beetles.   

I pressed on – haunted, yet nourished by what I had seen and heard.  Above the scrub pine forest, was an open snow field.  By now the nascent morning sunlight reached the surface of the snow at an acute angle.  As I walked, it glinted from the millions of individual ice crystals, like a visual cacophony of camera flashes capturing a key play at a nighttime Superbowl.  As my mind wandered—a couple hours of free association being the reason I was there—I imagined these flashes were directed at me, as though somebody wanted to document my ascent for posterity.  ‘Gosh, it ain’t no big deal’ I would reply with the best breathless humility I could muster, ‘It ain’t nothin’ any other elite athlete couldn’t accomplish on a good day’.  Yeah … sometimes I really crack myself up. 

My musing came to an end as I reached the juniper grove that guarded the summit.  This grove, though only about thirty yards across, is dense, and confusing – a labyrinth, requiring strategy to negotiate.  Some years, when the overnight snowfall hid the paths of earlier hikers, I’d plod up and back two or three cul-de-sacs before finding a place to break through.  As nice as it is to lay fresh tracks on virgin powder, there is something to be said for the confidence in one’s path that comes from following more experienced footsteps.  

Beyond the junipers, the slope flattens, and I reach the bald pate of the summit.  The view is breathtaking - irrespective of the aerobic work to reach the top.  Ahead, and just west of due north is Broken Top.  No depth of snow can hide the scars of the geological violence which it's name describes.  Further west, and a bit north, lay South Sister – more distant, but no less dramatic, with its more refined cone-shaped summit, followed by Middle and North Sister.  On a clear day like today, Mount Washington, Three-Fingered Jack, and Jefferson may be seen, shining in the distance.  

As beautiful as is the view, the top is exposed, and it doesn’t take much of a breeze at 25 degrees to discourage a lingering farewell.  A few pictures to capture the moment; perhaps brief pleasantries with other intrepid souls at the top, then a U-turn back to head downhill.  

Descending Tumalo Mountain seems less memorable.  It goes faster, and there is less attention to the scenery (or perhaps less need for excuses to take a break to admire it).  Wherever there is a clearing, you just look at Mount Bachelor – by now in full operation.  The faster pace, and without the effort of climbing in the snow, the unconscious craving for out-of-body moments is not as strong.  And, of course, there is my focus; hike to the bottom, doff the snowshoes at the car, drive back to town, and enjoy the cold beer I’ve just worked so hard to earn.