snow forecast - The Gorge is my Gym

The Clymb: free membership.
Access to super cheap gear including Trew, Zeal, Sierra Designs, and many more.

This week’s forecast is brought to you by Flow Yoga on 3rd Street in downtown Hood River. With all this rain, workout choices are getting limited, but not at Flow. You can choose from 25 fitness/training classes and 32 yoga/meditation classes. Starting November 6th, Flow is offering a 6-week snowsports series that targets your skiing and riding muscles (aka, your powder thighs). It’s going to be a solid workout, lots of fun, but most importantly, it’ll bring you into ski season ready for hours of faceshots (and way less time lying around sore the next day). As an added bonus, the instructor, Jessica is rad. If you’ve never been a Flow member, you can try out a month for just $49. One of you will win a free month membership at the end of this week!

—

Good morning!

If you’ve bought yourself a Mt. Hood Meadows season pass this year, come on down to the Hood River Inn today from 10-4 and get your pass photo taken. Skip the long lines at the resort and have your photo taken in the comfort of Tom’s hotel.

Thanks to everyone who come out for the trail work party at Post Canyon yesterday. I had every intention of being there (not to mention putting out a forecast yesterday), but I didn’t wake up until after 9am. Not really sure how that happened. I think the darkness outside had me fooled that it was still early when I first woke up. Lesson: use a clock instead of the level of light coming through the window.

In the wind world, I dreamed last night that it was glassy in Hood River and blowing 34 at Maryhill and 32 at Arlington. It does look like we’ll see some gusty west winds in the 20-25 range this afternoon in the desert, but nothing like what Bart reported to me in my dream last night. We may see some sailable east winds towards the middle of the week as high pressure builds in.

Up at Mt. Hood, it’s been raining at lower elevations for a couple of days and snowing above 6000-6500’ or so. With Timberline’s upper telemetry completely down, T-line’s lower telemetry giving incorrect snowfall amounts, and Meadows’ snowfall telemetry reading at 5250’, it’s pretty tough to work out exactly what’s going on up there. Basically all I have to work with is the forecast models, and they are saying snow levels above 6000 feet for at least the next few days. If we get a free-thaw cycle towards the middle of the week, we could see nice corn snow on Wednesday and Thursday.

Coming up next week, the Nelscott Reef big wave contest is on for Tuesday. Head to Lincoln City to watch some amazing surfing with a 21 foot swell. Cross your fingers that the wind dies off enough for them to run a good event. On Friday, the tele movie Freeheel Life II plays at Dog River Coffee in Hood River. Maybe you don’t tele ski, but last year’s Freeheel Life was good, so come check out this year’s. $6 gets you in.

Have an awesome day today!

Temira

p.s. If you find this report useful, entertaining, or just want to recognize all the hard work that goes into it, please take the time to make a donation by clicking on the button at the bottom of the page. For a suggested donation of $10, I’ll add you to the email version of this list ‘til May 2011, putting you in the running for cool prizes donated by the weekly sponsors.

The Clymb: free membership.
Access to super cheap gear including Trew, Zeal, Sierra Designs, and many more.
Click to join.

This week’s forecast is brought to you by Flow Yoga on 3rd Street in downtown Hood River. If you’re desperately searching for a workout now that the trails are muddy and the roads are slick, think about joining Flow (the not-just-yoga Yoga studio). You can choose from 25 fitness/training classes and 32 yoga/meditation classes. Starting November 6th, Flow is offering a 6-week snowsports series that targets your skiing and riding muscles (aka, your powder thighs). It’s going to be a solid workout, lots of fun, but most importantly, it’ll bring you into ski season ready for hours of faceshots (and way less time lying around sore the next day). As an added bonus, the instructor, Jessica is rad. If you’ve never been a Flow member, you can try out a month for just $49. One of you will win a free month membership at the end of this week!

—

Good morning, and welcome to another day in a string of winter-like days in the Gorge. It’s cloudy out there this morning, from the Columbia River to the top of Timberline (as best I can tell, anyway).

There’s not much wind in the forecast for the next few days, unless you’re headed to the coast for southerlies. If you are, you already know that it’s windy. Speaking of the coast, the Nelscott Reef contest is yellow-lighted for a short window of opportunity with a 31 foot swell at 17 seconds.

If you were thinking of earning turns today, you’re going to have to go pretty high. The snow level was above the base of Meadows yesterday, and at least .5” of rain fell. In addition, on Wednesday, the sun warmed the snow enough that the surface melted. It’s going to be dust-on-crust conditions below 6000 feet (or maybe even higher than that) Hike high or don’t hike at all. If you don’t want to earn turns, Timberline is open Fri-Sun with Pucci, Bruno’s and Molly’s lifts operating on the lower mountain. Your fusion pass will get you on the mountain now through June.

Boaters, the White Salmon was at 2.0 feet last night, and the Hood is still hovering around 3.3 feet. At this point, I’d say our best chance of seeing the rivers come up again is Sunday morning, after a fast-moving front swings through on Saturday night.

Coming up this weekend, there’s the Cooper Spur Ski Patrol ski swap at the HR Saddle Club on Saturday at 9am. Also on Saturday at 9am is a trail work Party in Post Canyon. Meet at Family Man at 9am. (If you were wondering, the HRVHS swap is November 12th this year). On Sunday from 10-4, you can get your Meadows pass photo taken at the Hood River Inn.

Have an awesome day today!

Temira