I just got back from my annual week-long ski trip, so I’m here with another mountain resort trip report. This year our group chose to do an epic road trip and caravan from Seattle to Bend, Oregon and ski at Mt. Bachelor.
Why Mt. Bachelor? Well, it’s only about six hours from Seattle, so it’s doable as a driving trip vs lugging ski gear to and from the airport. Driving also allows people to bring their dogs, without crossing a border into Canada. And, of course, several people had already purchased Ikon passes for the season.
Lodging & Transportation
There’s quite a few options to stay when traveling to Mt. Bachelor – there’s downtown Bend with all the shops and breweries, and then there’s outlying resort areas. We chose to stay within Sunriver, as we had in total eleven adults, one child, and two dogs, so choosing a massive house with a large kitchen was what we preferred. Sunriver is about 25 minutes away from Bend, and it has its own central area with some restaurants and stores. I think Bend is slightly closer to the mountain, but Sunriver was only about 30 minutes away from skiing, so there wasn’t a big tradeoff there.
As I said in the open, we were driving from Seattle. Snow was called for both the day we arrived and left, luckily we didn’t run into any conditions that were too crazy. Highly recommend familiarizing yourself with Oregon’s chain laws and using Oregon’s TripCheck to check on conditions during your ride. We used a Subaru Outback with Three Peak Mountain Snowflake tires and a driver who grew up in the snow of Chicagoland, so we were just fine. The snow driving also came in handy making the daily trips to the mountain, so make sure your car is appropriately set up for this kind of driving.
You can also fly to the area, there is a small airport in Redmond, Oregon that has a few direct flights to other west coast cities. We personally wanted to do a road trip this year because we wanted to hang out at a house with mountain dogs. I’d assume that you’d need to rent a car anyway, as Redmond is still a bit out of Bend, and Bend is not the mountain.
Skiing at Mt. Bachelor
Writing a review of a mountain is inherently based on the conditions that you happened to have during the time you visited, which is not controllable. But when is your experience a fault of the ski resort and when is it just a fault of Mother Nature’s fickle temperament?
We were lucky this year, there was a great snowfall the day we drove down from Seattle, so there was a lot of fresh snow our first day on the mountain. Throughout the week, there were snow showers to continually have the base soft and refreshed. Pretty awesome conditions, actually, for the Pacific Northwest.
But the Summit lift, the only lift to the top of Mt. Bachelor, was never open the entire week we were in Oregon. Mt. Bachelor advertises that it is the seventh largest resort in North America. Unlike other ski resorts where the resort may take up a face or several faces of adjacent mountains, Mt. Bachelor covers the entire mountain. It’s a cool concept. But when the literal only lift to the top of the mountain isn’t open, suddenly that seventh largest resort in North America seems like a massive exaggeration.
And it’s not like the rest of the mountain was guaranteed to be open the days that the Summit lift was closed. Northwest and Outback frequently started the day on wind hold or de-icing hold, and at least one was closed on two separate days. Cloudchaser on the other face of the mountain also started on wind hold frequently, and one time broke down with us on it.
I’m not doubting that the conditions were bad and the lifts were unable to be opened. Visibility was extremely poor at the top of lifts several days, and the wind was gusty and biting. But it hits a little sour when a non-trivial amount of terrain is closed for a majority of a week-long trip.
And I’m not even mentioning the day where a majority of people who rode Pine Marten, the primary lift from the West Village, and got grease or de-icer rained upon them. And when the lifty was told about it, he said “what the f am I supposed to do about it?” So, yeah, bring your garbage gear to Mt. Bachelor unless you like rocking the unintentional dalmatian look.
This makes it sound like I had a bad time. I didn’t have a bad time. I actually really enjoyed skiing at Mt. Bachelor. But to say that the trip didn’t have frustration would be a lie.
As for the terrain itself, excepting whatever is off of Summit, I really liked what Mt. Bachelor had to offer. And if you’re reading this trying to figure out if the mountain is for you, let me ask you – Do you like skiing amongst big evergreen trees? If “yes”, you’ll like what Bachelor has to offer.
Mt. Bachelor has all the tree terrain you could want – steep tight trees, less steep wider trees, groomed paths that still wind between stands of trees so you feel like you’re in the trees without the chance of a tree well. The soft snow made for an excellent time exploring. I ventured into steeper trees a few times, and also skied a lot of the groomed runs, and it was fun. I can’t speak for true beginners, but I think anyone who’s comfortable on blues all the way up to tight scary trees will find terrain that’s enjoyable.
My favorite terrain was off of the Cloudchaser lift. In general, it seemed to have better visibility and wind conditions than other parts of the mountain, and I really liked exploring the various trails. Just be careful – if you go too far into the East Bowls you will have a wickedly flat or uphill traverse on your way back to the lift. Not great for skiers, absolutely awful for snowboarders.
Mt. Bachelor – The Summary
Would I go back to Mt. Bachelor again? Maybe. The road trip itself has positives – easier to bring dogs, possibly cheaper, definitely easier to haul the extra food you bought back to Seattle. It’s hard, though, to want to go back to a mountain where you feel like you don’t get to access all of its terrain. As a destination, Bend is exciting, and there were lots of options for big group houses in the area, but you do still have to drive a distance every day to go ski. So it’s a bit of a mixed bag.
What do you think? Have you ever been to Mt. Bachelor? Have you ever skied the Summit? Let me know in the comments! Are you interested in my other trip reports? Check out last year’s from Palisades Tahoe where we got snowed out (in a bad way).
