Mt. Hood trip from 4/16 to 4/17...

[Tonyr]

Resort or Ski Area

Mt. Hood

Date

Apr 16, 2025

Snow Conditions

1. Slush or Spring Snow
2. Sticky

We made our way up to Mt Hood from Bend late this morning. Got up to the Timberline Lodge around noon Pacific time, bought some lift tickets, and then went out and skied for a few hours while we waited for our room to be ready.

As fans of the Shining, my son and I very much looked forward to staying at this historic hotel. It's beautiful inside, this is the lobby area...

The outside of the hotel was what was in the movie. The inside of the Timberline Lodge looks nothing like the Overlook hotel in the movie. I read that the inside of the Overlook was modeled after a hotel in Estes Park, CO. In the Shining, all of the inside shots of the hotel were built as part of a movie set.

In any event, Mt Hood has three ski resorts. Timberline which is where the Lodge is, Mt Hood Meadows, which has the best terrain on Mt Hood, and Mt Hood Ski Bowl which is at the lowest elevation and is closed for the season. From what I've read Meadows and Ski Bowl are the best spots. Timberline is very mellow terrain like Mt Bachelor. I'll say that with a storm, I thought the tree skiing looked better here than Bachelor but that's just my observation after only skiing at Timberline for a couple of hours.

In any event here are some of my better photos of the day. Tomorrow a trip to Mt. Hood Meadows is our last ski day of the trip. I'm about ready to be done for the season at this point anyway! Here are some of my better photos from today...






Conditions were perfect at the top and sticky towards the bottom of each run. The weather was in the 50's and sunny.

 

[jimk]

Tony you really get around. Are there any major (or minor) North American ski areas you still haven't been to that you want to visit in the future?

 

[Tonyr]

Including summer hiking visits, I've been to over 70 US ski resorts and my son has been to over 60. At this point we've pretty much been everywhere we'd like to go in the US.

We haven't been to a single Canadian resort but Whistler, Revelstoke, Kicking Horse, and Banff would all be on my list to visit one day.

In the US, I'd like to ski Mt Bohemia, Whitefish, Schweitzer, and Sun Valley. They are just all a pain in the butt to get to from the east coast. At this point though I think we'll mostly just stick to the places we love to visit in Utah and Colorado.

 

[Tonyr]

Our last day of the ski trip and season was Thursday April 17th at Mt. Hood Meadows. This place has Oregon's best and most varied terrain. We got out at 10 am and skied a little over three hours which gave us enough time to get a good feel for the ski resort. Conditions were firm for the first hour then the last two hours out we skied in about perfect spring conditions.




The highlight of the mountain for us was skiing Heather Canyon. It has a very similar feel to the Northway lift served pod at Crystal Mountain. Heather Canyon has some super steep lines through the trees in there. The only downside is that the return lift is very old and slow and some of the terrain in Heather Canyon shoots you back into the parking lot. With that being said, Heather Canyon's expert terrain pod is as challenging as anywhere.






Just like our late March Maine trip this season, I'm glad we got a chance to experience some Pacific Northwest skiing but I wouldn't necessarily be in a huge rush to come back unless it were to visit Bend in the summer.

If Crystal Mountain ever built some nice slopeside lodging I'd definitely want to return there one day. Getting in and out of Seattle from the east coast is pretty easy and we absolutely loved the terrain at Crystal making it by far our favorite resort we visited during this trip. In any event, that's It for the season. I hope you enjoyed our final trip report!