Climate change broke my arm.
This new thaw-freeze cycle is vicious.
February 27th started out as a perfect bluebird-sky day on Mt. Bachelor, my hometown ski hill. My sister and I played hooky for the morning and headed up the road to the mountain to ski. After a few lovely groomer runs, we decided to hike up from the summit lift to an area known as the pinnacles. From the top of the pinnacles skiers drop into a bowl which often offers the best skiing on the whole mountain. (This might sound extreme, but you’ll have to trust me that it is not. It may be the steepest part of Mt. Bachelor, but still very doable and fun for an intermediate skier. We’re not talking Corbets Coulior here.)
Looking down into the bowl from the top of the pinnacles, the snow field that seemed so inviting from the chairlift was actually more ice than snow — a beautiful crystal blue ice sheet under a dusting of new flakes, littered with ice chunks and crusty ripples. Rather than try to navigate this minefield, we traversed across to the other side of the bowl which looked more forgiving. My sister made the traverse; I got hung up on a chicken head.
