Hoodoo completes preparations for the new season

When the ski season at Hoodoo ended in April, work at the ski resort didn't end with the departure of the snow. So, while most skiers file away thoughts of the slopes for a few months, quite a bit goes on behind the scenes to prepare for the next season. In fact, Hoodoo's Mountain Manager Jim Follis has had a busy summer and fall preparing for the snow that everyone hopes will soon put in an appearance.

Stuck in that awkward limbo between hiking season and ski season, my hiking and skiing buddy suggested that we climb Hoodoo Butte as a sort of transitional compromise activity. We parked at the Hoodoo Lodge and followed the Easy Rider ski run all the way to the summit.

The first thing I noticed was that the bare slopes were in great condition. I remembered that only a couple of years ago, little pine trees and bushes dotted the ski slopes with so many impediments that it looked like it would take a snowfall of four or five feet before skiing would even be possible. That is certainly no longer the case this year.

Today, it doesn't quite look like a golf course fairway, but it's pretty close. Except for scattered decaying logs and the occasional basketball-sized rock, Hoodoo's ski slopes could almost pass for someone's lawn, albeit kind of a rough one. The point is that the slopes have been manicured to the point that it looks like just a couple of feet of snow will make for some great skiing.

When we reached the summit of Hoodoo, we ran into Follis on an ATV. He was out surveying his domain and seemed anxious to see the ski season get underway. I asked him about the excellent condition of the slopes.

"The last two years, we've been really focusing on mowing," said Follis. "It really makes a difference for opening up early and not needing as much snow. We have an Aebi tractor, with multiple attachments, which is made by the Swiss and designed for mowing on steep slopes."

Even with Hoodoo's high-tech mower, not every slope on the mountain is mowable.

"We do a lot of hand-cutting, too," said Follis. "We hand-cut in the center of the runs where we can't get with the Aebi. All of Hodag (the western chair on the back side of the mountain) and the upper runs have all been cut by hand."

On the way up the mountain, we noticed quite a few recently felled trees along the edges of the Easy Rider run.

"We've taken out probably about 200 or 300 hazard trees left over from the B&B Burn (the severe 2003 forest fire)," he said. "We fell a lot of hazard trees on the Nordic Trails, too," he added, "particularly along the race course and the staging area. We've done that along every loop except Hayrick Glade. It's just too swampy down there."

Hoodoo's improvements don't end there; they also have a new snow groomer.

"We bought a new Pisten Bully snow cat," Follis reported. "We're the first in Oregon to have a PB-600, which is top-of-the-line," he said. "For our alpine snow grooming, we also have three other older PB snow cats and a Bombardier for a total of five groomers."

Follis said that the resort also has "new track-setters for the Nordic trails and new gear this year at the rental shop." Now all they need is the snow.

One additional note for anyone who might think about following in the footsteps of our Hoodoo hike next year. I recommend staying on the established ski runs. We decided to explore the area further by descending through the summit crater and down the east side of the cinder cone. Bad idea. We encountered a dense jungle-thicket of manzanita, which was only a very marginal micro-measure better than "impenetrable."