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Are the outdoorsy types in your life seeming a little…twitchy? Are they watching Mt. Hood Meadows’ webcams of rain and mud and dead grass every day just to make the pain of a delayed ski season hurt a little more?
Oregon ski areas typically open for the season around Thanksgiving, but here we are in mid-December and the runs on Mounts Hood and Bachelor are still alarmingly snow free. The multiple atmospheric rivers that swept through the Willamette Valley last week did nothing to help the mountains’ snowpack because it was too warm. It all fell as rain, just like it did down here.
“While, of course, we’d like to be spinning lifts by this time of year, we are grateful that our season is one of the longest in the country and look forward to skiing and riding through Memorial Day in May. We anticipate there will be pent-up demand once we do open,” says Presley Quon, spokeswoman for Mount Bachelor.
Bachelor needs about 24 inches of snow to open, plus a forecast for continued cold temperatures. The latest the mountain has ever opened for skiers was in 1976, when lifts didn’t start running until Jan. 2, Quon says. More recently, the 2023 ski season got off to a late start, with Mount Bachelor opening Dec. 2 and Mt. Hood Meadows opening Dec. 9—though we, of course, have already flown past those dates.
Quon and her team sent an ebullient email Oct. 13 when Mount Bachelor received 5 inches of snow in the base area, setting opening day for Nov. 28 and proclaiming “early season snow setting the tone for a great season ahead.” The ski area has not set a new timeline for opening.
“Keep those snow dances coming,” Timberline Lodge wrote on social media Dec. 4.
