Outside

On June 12, 1853, three members of a mining expedition searching for the legendary “Lost Cabin” gold mine stumbled upon a “deep blue lake” in southern Oregon. Roughly 50 years later President Theodore Roosevelt created Crater Lake National Park on May 22, 1902. And, last Thursday, I turned 40. I couldn't think of a better way to beat back the middle-aged blues than tackling Oregon's crown jewel of a national park.
Ski hopes and dreams
There are many numbers that illustrate the magnificence of Crater Lake. It's 594 meters deep with 4.6 trillion gallons of water. But, the only number in my head was the 31 miles around the lake.

Once again locals reigned supreme at the 200-person Horse Butte 10-Miler, an early season trail race staged on Bend’s eastside on April 7.
Bend’s fastest cowboy, Max King, who toed the line sporting a thin white pearl-snap western shirt and cut off jean shorts, blazed to the finish line in record time this year, winning the 10-mile race in 54 minutes, 7 seconds. Katie Caba, also of Bend and wearing a more traditional running kit, was the fastest woman of the day, clocking in at 1 hour, 5 minutes, 28 seconds.

They go from town. Pedaling down the shoulder, they ride side-by-side because traffic is minimal and the cars that do pass have bikes on top. The woman is local, but the two men are from out of town. She takes a left toward the trailhead and they follow, passing a parking lot half filled with dirty Subarus and Toyota pickups. A 1984 VW Westfalia the color of burnt toast sits off in one corner with the sliding door open, giving the riders a quick glimpse of goose-bumped skin as someone shimmies out of their shorts.

So, here we are, end of March and Bend's seasonal identity crisis continues. Just as Bendites start looking ahead toward longer days and greener pastures, Mother Nature laughingly gives us what we asked, no prayed for months ago.

“The fact that this nine-mile snowmobile access road is the only in and out is a pretty significant safety issue here,” says our guide Ross Duncan over the rumbling engine noise of the snow cat as we travel further and further away from paved road and deeper into backcountry. “From that sno-park it's about 100 miles to the nearest hospital.” Food for thought that, for some, would probably be a solid reason to stay home. But for the eight of us and our three guides, it's why we're here, fresh tracks in the middle of nowhere.
My morning started five hours ago in Bend with a 3 a.m. alarm, immediately followed by a prompt smack of the snooze button. There aren't a lot of things that can get me to wake up at an hour that I once considered a bedtime. But in the last 24 hours about 2 feet of fresh snow has fallen on Mt. Bailey, two hours south of Bend and just north of Crater Lake, near Diamond Lake resort.

Juck Macilster is accustomed to working alone and in the dark.
Four times a week, Macilster (not his real name, more on that later) fires up his Bombardier BR400 snowcat, pulls it out of an oversized garage at Virginia Meissner Sno Park and begins a typical eight hour grooming shift, just as he did on Saturday night.
He was gracious enough to let me ride along for a bit and interrupt his otherwise peaceful evening.
As we rumble away from the shed, I watch him lift and lower the enormous winged blade on the front of his mid-1980s-model snowcat as I shower him with newbie questions. Macilster explains to me in simple terms the complex controls that look more like a flight deck and less like a car or tractor.

I'd like to thank both high and low-pressure systems for working together to bring us some perfect late season weather. Depending on where you were, between one and four feet of snow fell in the mountains, as well as Bend, and hung around because of the low temperatures. Even Mt. Bachelor announced the snow level was above average. I filed that declaration between Bend's reported 300 days of sunshine and Central Oregon's fluctuating, fear-based water reports.
After that storm system headed east to terrorize the Midwest, we were left with bluebird days and multi-sport dreams. Quite frankly, if you couldn't find a reason to play outside last weekend, you live in the wrong town!

George Cocores is an adapter.
While plenty of us sat around bitching about the lack of snow and inoperable lifts at Mt. Bachelor, Cocores was getting his.
The experienced 49-year-old kayaker has been taking advantage of unusually high flows on the Deschutes River as it runs through town. He's already matched his goal of 50 runs on the Class IV+ stretch of water known to whitewater fiends as the Riverhouse run. The stretch surges from Sawyer Park to Tumalo State Park and is a popular experts-only section of the river due to its proximity to town. It's an easy three-hour session if the flows are adequate, which means above 500 cubic feet per second according to Geoff Frank, owner of Tumalo Creek Kayak and Canoe.