Feeling out FernieWhy did you move to Bend? If you’re like most people I know, you took a paycut in order to have Phil’s Trail in your backyard or to get in a run along the River Trail at lunch. You’re now drastically underemployed so that you can ski midweek at Mt. Bachelor or climb Monkey Face on a regular basis.
But Bend has changed a lot since you moved here-our real estate still qualifies as some of the most overvalued in the country, there’s more traffic on the roads and the trails and more subdivisions between you and the forest. Some other communities, fearful of becoming what Bend is now, have printed bumper stickers like “Don’t Bend Walla Walla.” Some Bendites, discouraged with the changes, have searched for the “next Bend” – the next great place with a similar outdoor lifestyle, but without all the hoopla.
p>FERNIE
Two years ago, Doug Werme and Cheryl Stomps, avid skiers and mountain bikers, sold their Bend home with perfect market timing and bought a 100-year-old fixer-upper in Fernie, B.C., a ski town of 5,000 tucked away in a narrow valley in the rugged Canadian Rocky Mountains. They were drawn by “really good alpine skiing at Fernie Alpine Resort and a small town with nice people.” It seemed like a good sign that a beautiful group of peaks visible from town are called the Three Sisters.
Bend’s loss was Fernie’s gain. They founded the Fernie Nordic Club, which grew rapidly to 229 members, and raised $40,000 to buy a snowmobile and Ginsu Groomer. Doug joined the ski patrol and became a local hero when he saved an 11-year-old boy during an in-bound avalanche at the ski area.
By the time they completed the extensive renovation on their house and spent two winters in Fernie, however, they realized that the winters were too harsh, the town was too small and, as nice as the Canadians are, they missed their friends in Bend. They moved back to Bend this past summer. Fernie’s loss is Bend’s gain.
McCALL
Also about two years ago, nordic skier Dan Packman and his wife Sandee moved from Bend to McCall, Idaho in search of great skiing and a smaller community. At 5,000 feet, McCall (population 2,500) gets 174 inches of snow annually in town. Situated on the southern shore of Payette Lake, it looks attractive on the map.
Ultimately, though, the Packmans discovered the “It’s a nice place to visit, but I wouldn’t want to live there” phenomenon. “There are four or five good places to cross country ski,” says Dan, “but it turned out to be the place where the motorheads from Boise go. The forest is overtaken by snowmobiles in the winter and the lake is swarmed by jetskis in the summer. The town lacks infrastructure and amenities and the over-zealous resort developers are all going belly-up now.” A couple of months ago, Dan and Sandee returned to their Bend home, grateful that they never sold it.
CRESTED BUTTE
Another couple I know moved to Crested Butte, Colorado about two years ago to get away from the craziness here. With a population of 1,500 and an elevation of 8,900 feet, it has the fewest people and oxygen molecules of the three Bend alternatives profiled here. Skiing and mountain biking are the reasons to live in Crested Butte.
For backcountry skiers, the event to put on your calendar is the Elk Mountain Grand Traverse (www.elkmountaintraverse.org), a 40-mile overnight race from Crested Butte to Aspen over 12,303 foot Star Pass. The race, scheduled for March 28th, follows an old mail route and starts at the stroke of midnight to minimize avalanche danger. Each team of two is required to carry enough food and supplies to sustain themselves for 24 hours.
I’ve visited Crested Butte several times for Fat Tire Bike Week, the original mountain bike festival, now celebrating 28 years (www.ftbw.com). The event features guided tours and races and lessons. There is hardly a more exquisite mountain biking experience than riding singletrack through head high Rocky Mountain wildflowers encircled by snow-capped peaks in late June.
As idyllic as that sounds, the couple found the winters too long and the town too small. They moved back to Central Oregon and bought a house in Sisters this past Spring.
MAYBE THE METHOW?
I spent Christmas cross-country skiing with friends in the Methow Valley in north central Washington and maybe it’s different. The people I’ve met who moved there from Bend have actually stayed. In a future column, I’ll tell you all about this slice of outdoor heaven.
This article appears in Jan 1-7, 2009.
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If all these couples were looking for a less populated atmosphere, then they found it,(except for the couple that went to Canada, I wouldn’t leave my country), they were just lightweights that couldn’t handle it. We moved here from Florida looking for a better life. I was disappointed that Bend had grown so much since the last time I lived here, in the 70’s. It’s colder here, there’s snow!, and we left all our freinds back in Florida. But it is worth it. Those people were looking for smaller populations and found them. What did they expect, Bend to move there with them? To me, they were just being babies.
People always complain, they are never happy. They move away because Bend has become what they want….well to have the malls to shop at, the restaurants they want to go to, they things they like to do….it all requires people to have those things. If there are not enough people they won’t bring in Olive Garden, Red Robin, or have big name stores to shop in, or WHATEVER. It all requires enough population to accomodate sales enough to have and keep these places all of you like. Stop complaining and enjoy the best state in the US. If that can’t make you happy then please….leave
We should all be excited about a new president soon to be in office. I can see how people move from Bend to get better paying jobs, but that is their choice. I may soon move myself, but I am not blaming anyone as the economy here is going to get a lot worst before it gets better. Small town corrupt politicians have discouraged growth in the labor sector for years in our county. We were graced by Cessna buying up a faultering Airplane company locally and local corrupt politicians are protesting the expansion of the airport possibly forcing them to move and leave a lot of folks unemployed. Small aircraft are the future globally and yet a lot of resistance to growth.
Bend is a great place to live in and I have enjoyed my years here greatly, but now it is time to move on and I am personally moving to grow in my career as I have hit the wall locally and no one wants to pay anything.
I am personally tired of the whining. The big whine topic in Bend is Mt. Bachelor. If you do not like them, do not spend your money there. Ski other areas. When they have been deprived long enough of your dollars, then they will be forced into change. Until then they have no reason to respond to the whining. They are in business to make money, period. I do not spend a lot of time being pissed at them. I simply vote with my dollars and I see no value in their ski area. Until they can show me a value, I am not spending my dollars. It is like buying a car or house. If I see value in the product I buy it and if not, then I do not buy it. Mt. B, do now owe locals anything. At the same time we owe them nothing either. If everyone simply did not buy passes and skied other areas, then they would be forced to compete. They like a lot of the employers in this area have a monopoly. Nurses and Docs make less here in Bend than F. EX the Bay Area or Seattle. Local politicians do not want companies coming in that pay well as that forces the good old boy club to have to pay higher wages and benefits. Secret to all you. they want to exploit you, charge huge prices and make a ton of dough and yet pay nothing to their employees.
On the West Coast there are a lot of place that are great to live. F.EX a condo in Whislter costs about 400 K and rents out for 1500 a week. Bend does not demand this kind of rate as it does not have the same draw, yet the condo is twice as much. Why is this? It is a fair question.
People in Bend need to start taking more action and stop whining so much. I love this place, but I am sick and tired of the whining and complaining about this area. You are free to leave as a lot of folks have already as it is going to take two decades for this area to recover as there are no jobs here. The safe jobs like the medical fields will also diminish as the population shrinks.
Until we promote and invite in larger companies we are going to be stuck. The average working class family makes 48 grand a year, homes here cost 300K. This is wrong and there is nothing economically which supports these home values.
My job offers me a wage of 90K a year, yet Bend only offers 40K. Sorry but I would rather live in the bay area or LA and make the extra money than be here with poverty with a view.
Funny that those people from Bend couldn’t find good xc skiing in the mountains near McCall. There are 5-6 areas set aside for skate skiing that are never intruded upon by snowmobiles … but I think just about any newbie would find that McCall is a great place to visit, but a really hard place to find a good job. That’s true of a lot of small mountain resort towns.
Theresa, the best state in the country? You probally have not been to Alaka, that is the only state that claim being the best. It is not just Mt.B, its the whole area has changed local and the state.People are not the same here anymore. Just glad I am visiting for a couple weeks. ( Glad I still own a house even though Deschutes co. taxes are out of line for my services)
OK, Whine-meisters, here’s some brie for ya!!
I grew up skiing the Doo, even taught at their ski school while in college in the 70’s & 80’s. (Is Crazy Richard still alive?) Sisters B-Bar-B was a real bar, and the Harley’s were ridden by guy without Rolex’s or college degrees.
Glad Chuck dumped his $10M into the ‘Doo, but he has not chained the altitude nor weather one iota with his dough. I will visit the Doo for some night skiing and family fun, but I will ski MBach for the mountain.
What are my choices? Ashland? Meadows? Besides, give Rathbun a piece of your mind. He and his wife are fairly available, and make a comment or two, and watch what happens. My suggestion was implemented within 24hrs, so change can happen… (just ask Obama). The folks at MB want to change for the better, just go to the web site and count how many updates they do during the day. Sometimes 9 or 10. That ain’t for the visitors, who drive up anyway. That is for the benefit of the locals who have passes and are waiting for the wind to clear, and then drive up for some turns. Give MB a chance to change.
And enjoy my Brie with your whine!!!
Although I am not a native Oregonian,I have been living in the Central Oregon area since 1999. Comming from a big city (Seattle) and growing up in “The OC” in California, I was acustomed to the big city life. Bend is a city but it is still no where near what it is going to be in the near future. Eventually there will be so many people that it start to resemble what we all left to come here in the first place. After ten years of being here I have seen the degredation of the Central Oregon economy, and have seen what big city politics are doing to working class citizens from all over Central Oregon.
I’m in Redmond now, and even this area has grown a lot in the last ten years, but it still have a few more years till we grunge it up like all the big cities already have. This place will eventually be like any other place in America. Population, population, population.
And another thing, for God’s sake people quit the bitching. If you want to see lower prices, dont pay the high prices. If you moved here so that you could “own a peice of the pie” to help our market economy,then you have made a bad investment; what ever happened to buying local?. The money just isnt here, people arn’t as frivolous as everyone hoped. You have to have money to spend money people, and the majority of us living here arn’t making enough money to just go and buy luxuries. If you do happen to be one of those with gobs of money, driving the lexus or escalade, looking down on all of us middle classers and you moved here to “make a better life”… so did everyone else that just moved here, if they are all like you then help us all.
The last time I checked, people were still making babies. All grow up and need to live somewhere. Thanks to our Veterans, we can all choose to live where we want to. If the streets are too busy here, the houses too costly, the taxes too high, the woods and mountains too crowded, the pay too low, too many people, too much growth, then by all means, leave! Two less cars!
Overall Bend is a great place, fun town, lots of outdoor activities, etc. All in all there are not a whole lot of towns that can compete on the same level as Bend, you get a lot here. No matter where you move there will always be pros and cons. However what people seem to dislike the most about Bend are the issues that are suppose to make Bend great. After this Holiday season working at a ski shop, I can say Bend is in for a long economic plunge. For a town that relies heavily on tourism, the town and Bachelor have to work together. After all the ticked off tourists that had nothing but harsh words to say about Bachelors ticket prices, lack of service, how may times they were stuck on lifts, no pre-morning warnings that even if you buy a $70 ticket we could shut the mountain down…alot of people are not coming back. Next time the Californians are going to Tahoe, the Washington people are heading to Whistler….Bend is great, but we need out tourists in order to survive, our local jobs and economy depend on it. Start giving a negative vibe about Bend and it’s number one winter attraction, people will go else where. At the $70 lift ticket, that puts Bachelor in direct pricing competition with many big name resorts that have a much better resorts and service. To the locals that hate tourists, you should be celebrating today, to the rest of us that depend on it, Bachelor should be ashamed, you hurt alot of local businesses this winter that really depended upon you being up to par.
I really don’t understand or have much sympathy for these rootless modern nomads who wander around the country searching for the “perfect lifestyle.” Life isn’t a commodity to be purchased; it’s something to be lived. Try focusing less on your lifestyle and more on your life. Try putting down roots in a community and seeing what you can contribute to it instead of just what you can get out of it before moving on to the next “best place.”
“Go ahead and move to SF or LA and get your 90K. Your housing costs will triple, but hey you seem to be quite the math major so the best of luck to you.”
The housing cost in Bend are the most overpriced in the nation. You do know that don’t you? You don’t even have to be a math major to know that, even the main stream media has reported it
“Try putting down roots in a community and seeing what you can contribute to it instead of just what you can get out of it before moving on to the next “best place.””
Did HBM even read the article? It sounds to me that the people contributed more to their new home than any old curmudgeon journalist.
Hopefully the people who have moved to Bend to change Bend into a place to hob nob with the rich and famous… and show us local Bendites how it is done in Southern Cal and other posh places will move back from wince they came….I for one am not saddened by the closure of Merenda’s and other ” high end” eating establishments. We hopefully will begin to focus on what Bend used to be all about, common hardworking people who enjoyed our beautiful outdoors and respected others. Bend has become a place of people with greed,snobbery and bad attitudes where our rural lifestyle was looked down on. These people came to change Bend into the very place they left…now they are ready to move to another mountain town to take over and mold into their Aspen,Lake Tahoe or whatever they want their money to buy. Maybe this economic downturn is a blessing in disguise, hopefully the people that genuinely love Bend will stay and make it a decent affordable place to live.
“Did HBM even read the article? It sounds to me that the people contributed more to their new home than any old curmudgeon journalist.”
What are you talking about? The only people mentioned in the column as contributing anything to their communities were the couple who moved to Fernie, and their contribution was founding a Nordic club.
“If there are not enough people they won’t bring in Olive Garden, Red Robin, or have big name stores to shop in, or WHATEVER.”
My God, how could we EVER live without Red Robin and Olive Garden?
It’s really amusing to see the locals get all orgasmic at the prospect of one of these mediocre chain restaurants locating here. Olive Garden is to Italian food as Taco Bell is to Mexican food. (I grew up in New Jersey and I know what I’m talking about when it comes to Italian.)
I, uhhhmmm, as a native, could care less where the next Bend is. Just go there. Now. Please.
I lived in Bend in what I belive were still the good years. 1975-1980. Although it was starting to show signs of “progress” as early as 1978. I found the next Bend but keeping it a secret this time.