Timberline has really picked up snowmaking in the last few weeks. Deep base and great surface on the open trails. Most of the mountain is open and looks great for early January. My only complaint (hint, hint Tline management) is that Off the Wall is lined with massive snow mounds all the way down the slope. I mean massive - no way they can they can be skied as they are just too big and drop off almost vertically on the downhill side. They divide the trail in half as well. There is a ton of money invested in those mounds. It would be incredibly wasteful to just leave them until the mountain closes. Please consider grooming them out and letting the trail properly bump up. There is enough snow there to make that slope last thru any thaw event. I repeat the mounds are the largest I've seen there and too big to be anything but dangerous. Hopefully management does the right thing.
Do they have the equipment to "do the right thing"?
Any word on when they may open Twister? Seems strange that they go to the trouble to open a long new trail like Twister, sell real estate to be "slopeside" and then rarely open it. Do they not have snow making on it and rely on natural snow?
might be that there's nothing left in the cookie jar.....
I was very pleasantly surprised in my first visit to Tline this year. They really have blown a lot of snow and focused on the most important trails before working on Twister. As of Sunday only Twister and The Drop weren't open and they were blowing snow on Drop. The base on the open trails is impressively deep and everything was nicely groomed. So kudos to Timberline.
As far as the massive whales on Off the Wall I can only GUESS at what they are doing. It is a steep trail and those whales are huge so maybe since Amos has left they don't have anyone with the skills in a groomer to groom out the trail. If that is the case it would imply that they didn't intend to blow that big of whales (i.e. too big to ski for those that are whale lovers). If so, I would try to entice Amos or a groomer from a nearby mountain to spend one night grooming that trail and then leave it. Perhaps they intend to groom it but just haven't gotten around to it is another alternative explanation. I hope so but as those mounds set up it will be a much more difficult job to groom. The worrisome thing is that since Amos retired they have left the whales all season even when the rest of the trail was getting patchy and thin. Maybe management just doesn't know. I guess we will see. If I was ski patrol i would be worried this MLK weekend as there is potential for some significant launches off the top of those whales from the unwary.
Good to hear the mtn was able to take advantage of that long run of good snowmaking weather. Haven't the giant whales been a common thing on OTW or The Drop for at least part of the winter almost every year at Timberline for the last decade or more? I believe you are a very strong skier (telemarker?), so if you are calling them unskiable they must be really crazy this time.
They are taller, steeper (off backside) and take up more of the trail than I've ever seen in my 10 years skiing there. Some of them you have to side step to get to the top. In the past a narrow line to skiers left of the whales and a wider one to skiers right. They are so large that, at least last weekend, there was no line to the left at all. They could leave the top few in the flats and the bottom few in the runout for folks that like them and for insurance snow in case of thaw and still have a very nice advanced bump run if they groomed the steep pitch once and left it. This would also make the trail much safer for those brave intermediate souls that love a challenge. Right now it is a survival test with little room for bail out traverses for these skiers. IMHO.
The website makes it seem like a few blacks are still closed.. is that not true?
