Hoodoo Ski Area suffers second-straight winter with insufficient amount of snow.
BY JACOB PALMER | OB DIGITAL NEWS EDITOR
After being open for just a few weeks last winter, Hoodoo Ski Area has been closed since Jan. 12 and some in the state are wondering if the season is already over.
The Bend Bulletin’s Mark Morical reported on the issue in a lengthy examination of the problem published Wednesday:
One snowstorm brought 26 inches of snow to the ski area and allowed it to open on New Year’s Eve, but with a combination of rain and unseasonably warm weather ever since, the snow base is pretty much nonexistent — just 4 inches as of Tuesday. (Hoodoo received 2 inches of snow on Monday night and Tuesday morning.) But the ski area needs 3 feet of snow to be able to effectively groom the slopes and reopen to skiers and snowboarders, according to Hoodoo general manager Matthew McFarland.
“We’re not even close, but our plan is to open,” McFarland says. “If we get 3 feet of snow, we’ll gladly open back up. There’s still another couple months of skiing left if we get snow. You could have one storm be enough. And we’re ready. So if we get one big storm tomorrow, we could be grooming it and open a couple days after that. It’s not far away. It’s not a slow process once the snow comes back.”
The Bulletin also covered snowmobilers’ woes from the lackluster season as Deschutes National Forest officials are telling people to consider another activity over President’s Day weekend.
“We just don’t have the snowpack to handle the volume of motorized (snowmobile) recreation we get on Presidents Day weekend,” Kirk Flannigan, deputy district ranger for the Bend-Fort Rock Ranger District of the Deschutes National Forest, said Monday.
Automated snow gauges along the crest of the Cascades and in the Ochocos are showing record-low snowpack in some spots, breaking marks set last winter in some cases, said Melissa Webb, a snow hydrologist for the Natural Resources Conservation Service in Portland. Recent rainfall in the Cascades has not helped what was already a paltry snowpack.
A dearth of snowfall isn’t bad news for everyone in Bend as OSU-Cascades launched its bike loan program Tuesday.
People in Bend can use Benny, Bernice, Betty or Norman to get around now, reports the Portland Business Journal:
The four bikes will be available to faculty and staff from 7 a.m. to 5 p.m. weekdays when campus is open. Officials expect the bikes to be used for both official business as well as personal errands such as picking up lunch.
“This is a small step that represents the responsibility we feel towards creating a university of people who think of other means of transportation beside personal vehicles,” said Kelly Sparks, associate vice president for finance and strategic planning.
