Our Beautiful Central Oregon Winter

Technically it is not Winter yet. Not until Wednesday Dec 21, but we like to start things early in Central Oregon!

We’ve had over a foot (or two) of fluffy snow so far; and when we have one of our many sunny days with the endless impossibly blue sky, the snow looks very pretty.

Last week, after a huge snow storm, I shared photos with my coworkers at my pay-the-bills-job. I am fortunate to be a telecommuter and my coworkers also telecommute, most from warmer climes such as Seattle and Portland (yes I say that with jest as it has been fairly cold, icy and even snowy in those areas).

One of my coworkers asked about our snow in Central Oregon so I sent her and my other coworkers photos of the snow around my neighborhood. At first I was going to share those in this blog post, but those photos are BORING compared to the recent photos my friend Jenny took of our beloved Mt. Bachelor skiing area.

Photos from the Mountain

My friend Jenny went snowboarding last week and took photos from her run at the top of the mountain. She was kind enough to give me permission to share them with you:

Now that is SNOW! I think this photos are worthy of a future art quilt inspiration (oh darn, I could have made this post part of my ongoing series “Creative Inspiration“. I might someday recycle these photos on a future post about creative inspiration…

Snowshoeing in Central Oregon

I am so lucky to live a short drive from one of the largest ski resorts in the country, Mt. Bachelor. I might be making this up but I remember hearing recently that it is the 5th largest in the country.

So you are thinking – wow, Tierney, you must ski all the time.

Nope. I grew up in NY and when I was in nursing school, I went with my roommates on my first ski trip to Vermont. I discovered that I was a terrible and highly uncoordinated skier. I have no place on snow skis…ever.

I did however eventually learn to cross-country ski. However, I did not particularly like it. What I discovered I liked, and so does Terry the Quilting husband, is to go snowshoeing!

I remember when we first moved from Seattle to Central Oregon and we went snow shoeing here for the first time. We had been snowshoeing several times in Washington State in places like Snow Parks and the Snoqualmie Nordic Center, so we thought we were comfortable snowshoeing.

So we scheduled a guided snowshoeing trip our first winter in Central Oregon with Bend Parks & Recreation as we thought that would be the best way to first experience snowshoeing in a new area.

As we boarded the Bend Parks & Recreation van to take us to a day of snowshoeing at one of the Sisters Mountain, we noticed we were the youngest people getting into the van. Everyone else, except for our guide, was a Senior Citizen. We thought, wow, we hope we do have to snowshoe too slowly with this group (fearing our day would be slow and boring).

No. We were the slow ones on the mountain. As I shared in the 04/25/16 post Monday Again, about my continuing adventures hiking up Pilot Butte, Central Oregon has some seriously fit Seniors here!

There was one woman, who said she was in her 80s and was originally from Switzerland, who was especially “dusting” us. We could not begin to keep up with her pace – all I could see in the distance was this tiny woman powering along with her snowshoes and her poles.  (I like to think it was because she grew up in Switzerland and maybe she lived on top of a mountain and had to snowshoe to school everyday…)

This was my first exposure to how fit people are here. My goal of course is when I am a Senior, that I am going to be very fit like the role models around me!

(Just a side note/excuse for our lack of initial fitnesses – we did move from Seattle, which was at sea level to Central Oregon which is on average at 3000 – 3500 feet above sea level elevation just at the ground level when you walk around town!)

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Postscript

I know, I know, this blog is called “tierneycreates” and if you are a crafter reading this you are probably wondering: “where is all the ‘creating'”. Well it is going on, I just cannot show a photo of it yet. I just finished a gift quilt and I am shipping it off to the person today and did not want photos of it on the blog until the person received it (that would take the surprise out of it!)

I did recently add to the right side of my blog a listing of and link to the websites of Central Oregon Quilt Shops, just to prove I really am a quilter (even if my blog does not show this lately) and to support the wonderful quilt shops in my area!