Skiing the Deep Steepness of Oregon’s Mt. Bailey

The guide pushed back his goggles and stared at the group.

“This is a volcano,” he said, “and there are hot holes that will swallow you up. I will point some out as we ski down. If I disappear, please stop.”

With no further instructions, Rick Oswald kick-turned and headed into one of the 13 glades that roll down from the top of Mt. Bailey, the only mountain on the West Coast that had deep-powder skiing in late December.

Eight skiers followed, fanning out behind him to carve their tracks in the fresh, light snow.

The wind-chill factor made the air temperature about minus 50, but for several in the group it wasn’t even cold enough for a wool hat. The only real shivers came from the stunning realization that a marvelous event was taking place: they were skiing.

Alta in Utah didn’t have snow. Neither did Sun Valley, Jackson Hole--or any other resort in the Rocky Mountains or High Sierra.

High-Pressure Ridge

During the holidays an unusually strong high-pressure ridge had kept Arctic storms, sweeping down from western Canada, from traveling farther south than the Cascades.

That left only this 8,300-foot massif a cannon blast away from Crater Lake in south-central Oregon with the kind of steep, deep snow conditions that skiers like to boast about on chairlift rides with strangers.

But even without snow there is a big difference between Bailey and the big ski resorts: It has no chairlifts. Its managers don’t even operate helicopters, vehicles that have become synonymous with powder skiing around the West over the past decade.

Instead, skiers here are ferried up the mountain in a snowcat--the squat, unglamorous but powerful snowplow-tractor that, at most areas, is a powder skier’s enemy because it turns fresh snow into hard pack.

But here at Mt. Bailey the ugly duckling turns into a graceful snowbird, noisily carrying 10 skiers at a time in a custom-built cab up to 6,000 acres of snow and scenery that rival the best in the world.

A Panoramic View

From its peak at 8,363 feet the panorama includes Mt. Hood at the Washington border to the north and Mt. Shasta in California to the south. In the middle, skiers are surrounded by towering lodgepole pine, hemlock, Douglas fir--and the kind of light snow that Utah, not Oregon, is famous for.

On a sunny day the snow breaks into tiny crystals at the surface and glistens like a downy blanket of broken glass. Powder skiers, however, disdain sunny days. The sun helps make great photographs but often creates lousy--even dangerous--conditions. The best time to ski powder, according to authorities, is during a storm.

Upper-mountain lifts at resorts, however, don’t operate in howling blizzards. And helicopters, as a rule, don’t fly in blizzards.

All of which makes Mt. Bailey special among Western ski areas. Its snowcats are unstoppable forces that let skiers see something new: the eye of the storm.

It is not a well-known ski area, even in Oregon. In south-central Oregon the 64-year-old manager of a cafe about 60 miles down the road from Mt. Bailey was unaware of its existence. It is not on every map.

My father and I only discovered it about five minutes before we had reservations. We were sitting at my kitchen table on the Sunday night before New Year’s, lamenting the lack of snow that was keeping us from our usual New Year’s trip to Mammoth, when my father asked to see back issues of Powder magazine.

“There’s got to be snow somewhere,” he grumbled, asking for the telephone.

He called all over. Taos in New Mexico was a possibility, but you couldn’t beg a reservation. Mt. Baker in northern Washington had a little snow, but not enough to warrant a 650-mile trip. Then he found a small ad for Mt. Bailey:

Forget Usual Runaround

“The Way Skiing Was: Uncrowded, Unspoiled, Untracked,” read the copy above a black-and-white photo of a skier drifting through chest-high snow.

A quick phone call to Mt. Bailey Snowcat Skiing, which operates out of the Diamond Lake Resort, set us up. Forget the usual runaround with toll-free numbers and switchboard operators. Robert (Gus) Gustafson, the area manager, answered the phone at Diamond Lake Lodge. Reservations were no problem, he said, because most skiers assumed that there was no snow.

“Well, is there?”

Gustafson laughed. “There’s plenty,” he said, “and more on the way.”

We flew into Medford, Ore., the next afternoon, and Gustafson picked us up in his van. On the 85-mile trip to Diamond Lake he told us about his dreams for the mountain.

A native of Minnesota who runs a commercial fishing boat in Alaska during the summer, he first saw the potential for skiing at Mt. Bailey when he worked here as a U.S. Forest Service snow ranger in the early 1970s.

By 1980 he had obtained a special-use permit from the Umpqua National Forest to guide skiers over the mountain. He decided to buy a $84,000 Pisten Bully snowcat to reach the snow instead of a $2.2-million helicopter, as much because of the often-inclement weather as the cost.

Blocked by Interior

He has been trying ever since to obtain permits to build chairlifts, but the Department of the Interior has blocked him so far.

Still, he’s mighty pleased to meet you, and here we are at Diamond Lake, hard by the Rogue River.

The lodge at the lake, about 250 miles from Portland, is a time capsule. According to my father, it really does represent the way skiing used to be, the way it was when he started in the early 1960s. The rooms don’t have TVs, much less cable or telephones.

The prices are from that era, too. A room with two double beds and an excellent shower is $37.50, no matter how many occupants. The costliest dwelling at Diamond Lake is a lake-side, kitchen-equipped cabin that sleeps six. Price: $60. But the midweek skiing package deal is truly astounding, by Mammoth and Aspen standards. More on that later.

The hospitality hearkens to a bygone time, too. When was the last time you didn’t have to produce a credit card at check-in? And when was the last time you found a restaurant that would open an hour before the posted time, if that’s when you wanted to eat?

A day of skiing at Mt. Bailey starts long before sunup and ends after sundown. We ate breakfast at 6 and were shuttled in the dark to the snowcat by 7:15. Dawn was breaking as the bulky red vehicle swayed and shook and climbed the mountain at about 10 m.p.h. with its load of skiers.

An hour later, after one quick stop at the dynamite cache and another at a mid-mountain shack where the dynamite was fitted with blasting caps and fuses, we were at the top of the mountain.

The glade skiing is pure pleasure, mostly intermediate terrain with an abundance of short drop-outs that allow quick, easy turns. The professionals call it “ego skiing,” and it’s hard to believe that you’re not just watching it go by on a movie screen.

But after about 900 feet of vertical comes the main event, on the north side of the mountain: 23 avalanche chutes that cascade as much as 1,600 feet from the bottom of the glades to a “catch line,” or run-out trail below.

Avalanche-Safety Routine

The first time we stopped at a chute’s edge, Oswald sternly instructed us not to ski past him. After he went through his avalanche-safety routine the first time, we needed no more warnings.

He crept up to the ridge above the steep face nicknamed Mindless, lit a stick of dynamite, and tossed it about 50 feet into the chute.

“Cover your ears and open your mouths,” he said, warning against the noise and the shock waves. “It’ll go in 90 seconds.” Then he added: If the snow doesn’t slide, we’ll ski it. If it does slide, we’ll wait a few minutes . . . then ski it.”

This is not for the timid. Six to 10 skiers die each year in avalanches across the nation, according to a U.S. Ski Patrol spokesman. Mt. Bailey’s guides have worked as ski patrolmen and are well-trained in rescue and emergency medical technique.

Oswald, 28, the lead guide, patroled at Mt. Hood for six years; Scott Dietrich, 26, the No. 2 man, who is working his first year at Bailey, worked the past three years at Alpental in Washington.

Safety takes priority. Each skier is outfitted with a transmitting device called a “Pieps” before the day starts. The receiver-broadcaster, which is hung around the neck on a string, puts out a radio frequency that other Pieps can pick up. If you are buried in an avalanche it will help other skiers to find you quickly and, if possible, dig you out.

Still, the idea is not to get caught in an avalanche in the first place--and to know what to do if one does start above you.

Oswald, a gregarious upstate New Yorker who asks to be called “Oz” and wore a Hawaiian shirt under his parka on New Year’s Oz pointed to a thin divide in the thick trees about three miles away and 2,600 feet down, then to a couple of fresh ski tracks in the snow.

“The ‘cat will pick us up at that road,” he said. “These tracks were made a couple of hours ago by Gus, and lead to the bottom. But I suggest you find your own way down. Almost any route through the trees will take you to the road. See you there.”

Appreciation for Trust

Suddenly, fear crept in, then an appreciation for the guide’s trust. And finally, an appreciation of the opportunity. Eight skiers had the run of an enormously difficult and pristine mountain at sunset. Concentration, intuition and skill were the keys to unlocking the moment of back-country freedom. Giving up was not an option.

“See ya at the ‘cat.”

Twenty minutes later, Dietrich was rounding up the pair of skiers who had gotten lost, my father included. The fact that it was past dusk didn’t bother Dietrich. Growing up on an apple orchard in Washington, he had tracked deer and elk through dense brush many times. Today it was slow-moving men on skis. No problem.

The guides’ laissez-faire attitude was common at the Diamond Lake lodge as well. The place is probably the snowmobile capital of North America. About 95% of its 500 rooms are filled with snowmobilers aged 5 to 80 who have come to take their machines, which can attain speeds of 120 m.p.h., to their limits on 320 miles of specially groomed trails.

Most look like winning entrants in a Darth Vader look-alike contest, clad in their black jump suits and helmets, and the resort managers don’t try to hamper an 8-year-old’s desire to show his mom how fast he can go at 11 p.m.

Yet the nightly din is a small surcharge to the cost of the room, and no one apologizes for it. What is there to be sorry for?

The skiing costs $85 a day, about $190 less than helicopter skiing. And the cost of room and board, including a full breakfast, huge sandwiches and pie for lunch, and prime rib for dinner? $35 a day. Plus tax.

It’s the only thing about skiing Bailey that isn’t steep.

Mt. Bailey Snowcat Tours, Diamond Lake, Ore. 97731, phone (503) 793-3333.