Snowcamp XXIX – Heeeeeere’s Johnny!!!

Many years ago, a couple of friends and I put on some snowshoes and walked out into a snowstorm for a winter camping weekend. It became a yearly thing, and I just returned from the 29th Annual.

This is our third time at Mt Hood. The draw is that we are guaranteed plenty of snow. But given that it is only an hour outside of Portland, there will also be hordes of people.

Sometimes, you have to pay the price. And grant patience to those city mice who love to take their fashion and politics into the wilderness.

I don’t get all the Timberline hype still fifty years later for the 1980 movie “The Shining.” They only used some exterior shots and one in the lobby Check out “Stephen King’s The Shining” for what I think is a better adaptation of the book to film.

Mt Hood also offers some of the best Snowcamp lodging: the famed Timberline Lodge. A massive WPA Depression-era project finished in 1938, it just looks so cool encapsulated in snow and ice at 6,000′.

But I’m getting ahead of myself.

We generally have 8 to 10 guys for this trip. On average, most of us have known each other for 30 years, from college, work, acquaintances, and grade school friends.

We come from all over the great state of Washington, and our destination changes every year. Depending on the location, some drives are longer than others.

As we all age, sometimes the driver needs to lay on his tailgate and hold on while his true friend pulls his leg and allows his hip to pop back into place.

That’s just how things are these days. But once you close the truck door, Snowcamp has you for the weekend. But when we rendezvous at the specified snow park lot to squeeze in a quick shoe before check-in time, I saw an omen.

Not so much that it was a mountain raven. But more than that, it was sleeting, cold, wet, and we had zero views.

And I’m done with the days of just putting on my snowshoes and getting soaked to the bone for a couple of hours to validate a long drive. Fortunately, it was a shared mindset.

Consensus was the word of the day. So instead, we opted for a couple of beers and a little catch-up time. What are the kids doing? Who retired? How are you still alive? Didn’t you have hair last year? Is that a new knee?

With the weather bad, we drove up to Timberline to try for an early check-in. Of course, that never happens. But guess what? Timberline has lots of lobby space and fireplaces, and there is no issue with open containers.

Depression-era stonework. Old guys. Cans of everything from Coors Light to Voodoo Ranger Juicy. Free loaner card decks at the front desk. The time passed quickly, and suddenly the room was ready.

Yeah. I said room. For eight of us. Timberline is a skiing lodge. As such, they have a handful of rooms on the lower floor made for groups called Chalet Rooms. You have to reserve them at least a year out, and they hold anywhere from 6 to 15 people.

Ours was the grandest. It holds a whopping 15 poor souls. Like steerage class in the Titanic.

Lots of bunks; most have a twin upper and queen lower. Not that there were any queens at Snowcamp. Well, at least not on the bottom.

It’s a couple hundred a night, but that gets pretty affordable when you stack people tight and high. Plus, this was not our first rodeo. Thirty years ago, we were all just married, and kids were on the horizon. There have been many Snowcamp experiences on a college beer budget.

Most of these guys have been sticking it to the man for most of their lives (maybe, just maybe, some ARE the man). But most are now fluent in a language called 401k.

Since camp is usually early/mid-January, there is typically a Christmas Dumping Ground table full of cookies, candy, and food gifts that have not entirely gone stale and that people hate to throw out.

The table also draws the partial booze bottles left over from the holidays. There is no Dry January at Snowcamp, although we do get a stray Mormon from time to time.

The wind at Timberline is notorious. It blows all the time and moves a lot of snow. As a result, every window on the first floor is always snowed in the entire winter. Any veteran of the Chalet rooms knows this and uses it to their advantage.

The windows still open, and keep the beer at the perfect chill without the fear of freezing. Nature’s refrigerator at its finest. And after all of these years, there is still swill swill beer. So timeless.

Hmmmm. It was zero degrees outside, and the walls were packed with snow. Inside the lodge, it was nice and warm, and the fireplaces were all roaring. So naturally, we saw a lot of these buckets. Why fix a problem when you can make it a historical experience?

Some guys opted for the heated outdoor pool and hot tub that holds 30 people. I’m serious. Follow this link. It’s unbelievable. But if I have to choose between a chlorine burn and Hepatitis (A, B, and C), I’m going with dominoes, a dash of whiskey, and a touch of ice (always hydrate).

 

 

Finally, it’s time to snowshoe. The weather has improved. Yeah, we clearly need to heat the trucks up. There will be window scraping. It will be a cold day.

The day will be the Trillium Lake loop. We expect really compact snow, wind, and people. Fingers are crossed that the blue sky will burn through. Doublecrossed

For some reason, no one wanted to wander out onto the ice that was clearly thick enough to support human weight.

Did I say these guys are starting to retire? 401k and stuff? Yeah, you can’t spend it if you fall through the ice. But ….. the wife… can……????

I’m not sure why I chose to wear my new hi-vis coat, which I bought because of a new school bus rule that came down when I was in Glacier last summer.

But I have to tell you, it definitely makes me pop in photos with these other losers. And it matches my eyes (but only when I get angry). 🙂

But the trail goes on. The hope for the sky to open up a little is getting thin. The sad part is that Mt Hood is RIGHT there and magnificent. Of course, only if you can see it.

Sometimes, you have to make your own sun, which I did quite well. And it only cost me 45 bucks on Amazon!!!

Anyone convicted of shoplifting should have to wear one for a year. Of course, then they would look like Longshoremen. Ouch.

Five miles on snow shoes is five miles the hard way. Your steps are all wanky, and you tweak muscles your body hasn’t used since the caveman days.

Your appendix suddenly starts to work again, and still, nobody knows what it does. Most were glad when the day was done.

Because that’s when the food comes!

Yeah. There is too much wrong with this picture to talk about everything. But… Mike loves to be the camp cook. And we love him for it.

No bourgeoisie ski lodge is going to stop him from performing his art. In the giant oven/crockpot thingy are going to be potatoes, rosemary, and ……. HUGE tubes of pork tenderloin.

Give it a couple of hours (don’t worry; he used a digital thermometer), and the glorious scent of our Valhalla-worthy Viking feast will be blowing through every pre-WWII air vent in the historic Timberline Lodge.

However, there was a design flaw with Chalet 15.

This takes a couple of hours and may or may not be attended. How much heat comes off the bottom of that mega cooker?

Enough to melt carpet? Start a dresser on fire? Mike has a healthy aversion to fire (don’t ask), and nobody wants to burn down something historic.

So, the heat-tolerant ceramic tile on the bathroom floor was a clutch move. However, not socially acceptable. Anywhere.

The amazing Chalet Room meal: pork, applesauce, Caesar salad, pasta salad, and Hawaiian rolls.

The maids may have to pressure wash the room when we leave, but true memories are not made; they are forged. In food.

 

But as great as Mike was, he f***** up. That’s right. He forgot to plate those glorious potatoes that sat under six pounds of pork tenderloin for hours, sucking up those wonderful juices. Modern-day Ambrosia. Nectar of the hiking gods.

But fortune favors the bold. And if you wanted to feast like an ancient god, you had to rise from the table and serve yourself bathroom potatoes. But there was no shame in this, as they were glorious, bordering on divinity.

Bathroom cooking has an unexpected plus (if you can get past all the First World taboos and shame): Cleanup is a snap. Clearly, I showered down the hall.

Too big of a slip-and-fall hazard for an old man like me. And I’m not a fan of smelling like potatoes and pork after bathing.

The nice thing about getting old is playing cards and actually enjoying it—unless you lose. Because when you play a game called The Village Idiot, and you actually become the Village Idiot, lifelong friends are brutal.

And why not? Statistically speaking, we all have another 20 years if everything goes well. And no one wants to die with the anger that my Snowcamp brethren have held back their entire lives.

But Timberline does have the ultimate male pacifier. A big screen TV that, if you speak to some random hotel staffer in the right kind of hippie barista slang, they can put in on a playoff football game for you.

But the room comes with a poison pill—an out-of-tune piano. Many kids with bad parents who clearly didn’t pay for piano lessons.

And so the final night comes to an end. Snowcamp 29 closes its eyes for the last time in a pitch-black room with snowed-in windows (but cold beer) and no exit if there is a fire.

The tribe falls into slumber with the understanding that they must chip the ice away the following day to get into their vehicles with negative wind chill.

There were lots of handshakes and smiles. This was a pretty plush experience. The first twenty-plus years of this event were spent camping in the snow in my tent trailer (before that, just tents on snow).

There were big fires, big stories, and big laughs. Now it is husbands turned fathers turned sunsetting careers turned empty nesters.

When you realize that life rolls on regardless of who you are or what you are doing, that’s when you will be glad for the passengers you met along the way. And Snowcamp has soooooo many passengers.

And that occasionally (in life), you need to stop. At a random gas station. And have a friend pull your hip back into place using your leg as leverage.

There is no great Yoda metaphor here. Because if you didn’t get it, I can’t explain it to you.

And I’m smiling as I think of Snowcamp XXX, which sounds like a Vin Diesel movie. Or, at the very least, like someone will need to schedule a retirement disbursement to pay for strippers.

We should have never used Roman numerals. GoatBoy out!