Last weekend when I was home in Portland for Thanksgiving, Danielle and I packed our bags and hit the hill for the my season opener.  (In fact, I do believe it was both of our first days up).  It was such an amazing day – several inches of new, fresh pow, a perfect blue-bird day, and of course, great company.  Danielle’s hubby is teaching lessons at Timberline this season, so we opted for T-line as opposed to our usual Meadows.  I haven’t been to T-line in years (I think the last time I went was for my high school snowboard team’s state championship meet – yes, that was a long time ago!) so it was a nice change of pace from the crowds and lines that characterize Mt. Hood Meadows.  (Now I’m not saying I don’t love Meadows – it has been and will always be my #1!)

Anyway, after arriving to the mountain (and spending a whopping $59 on lift tickets) we were ready to ride.  We got a lot of riding in for the maybe 5 or 6 hours we were on the slopes, namely because there were very short lift lines.  Most of the time we were able to just hop right on!  We spent most the day on the Mile, because from what I hear a nice day up top is pretty hard to come by.  There was a park with some pretty nice tables and jibs, but after a few first-day-up spills we decided to ditch the park and freeride.

We finished out the day with the Alpine Trail, a “top secret” trail that only locals know about (OK, maybe that’s a bit of stretch) that takes riders along a 2.5 mile trail from Timberline to Government Camp.  We started from the top of Magic Mile and made our way down to (and through) the Alpine Trail – 3.5 miles in all.  Man were we spent!

Thanks, Timberline, for a great first day up, and I’m so looking forward to more just like it!