Shot on location at theHistoric Great Hall at Sunriver Resort
When it comes to the holiday season in songs, a range of artists have lent their talents to covers—from Lady Gaga and Coldplay to Justin Bieber, Diplo and Tyler, the Creator. (For a real treat, listen to Twisted Sister’s rendition of “Oh Come All Ye Faithful.”) But certain chords and refrains from original classics dance in our heads like sugarplum fairies and sound like home. Find gift ideas, songs and the spirit of the season from Bend Magazine to help make your holidays merry
and bright.
Chestnuts Roasting onAn Open Fire
Nat King Cole’s 1946 recording of “The Christmas Song” was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame.
Gene Autry’s recording of “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer” was No. 1 on the Billboard charts in 1949, but the Rankin/Bass stop-motion animation television special from 1964 brought the song (and the Abominable Snow Monster) to life.
Frank Sinatra and Dean Martin both recorded versions of “Let It Snow! Let it Snow! Let It Snow!” ironically written during a 1945 heatwave in Hollywood, California.
Brian Malarkey Serves His Own Brand of Refined Rustic Food, With a Touch of Glam
Tumalo, 1983: Nine-year-old Brian Malarkey is riding a skinny-tired 10-speed down a rocky dirt road to school. He’d already cleaned out the horse stalls at the family’s 90-acre cattle ranch and in winter, he’d have broken the ice in the animals’ water troughs. An entrepreneurial kid, he’d earned a small bundle selling Scottish terrier puppies he’d bred and was splurging on taking his family out for a steak dinner—at Beef and Brew. It was the only restaurant more exciting to him than Bend’s first McDonald’s, which opened when he was six.
It wasn’t the Central Oregon experience that draws people here today. “It was down and dirty,” said Malarkey. The first chance he got, he was off—at 17, to Portland, then Seattle, Santa Barbara, L.A., Minneapolis, and San Diego, working his way up from a chef to a serial restaurateur. After selling his first restaurant group for $25 million, he launched a second group with 10 San Diego-based concepts, including the acclaimed Herb & Wood.
Simmering on another burner throughout this time: Television — Food Network shows, Bravo’s “Top Chef,” ABC’s “The Taste,” appearances on “Good Morning America” and “Today.” While the world learned about Malarkey, he learned about the culinary world.
Coming back to Central Oregon a couple of years ago, he saw it anew. “I finally looked around. I was like, oh, my God, this is paradise. It took me a lifetime to realize I was born in paradise. I’ve been running from it my whole life.”
His brother, entrepreneur and business partner James Malarkey, piqued the restaurateur’s interest, telling him about the ways the City of Bend encouraged new businesses with programs such as opportunity zones, that offered tax incentives. The celebrity chef said he never would have considered opening a restaurant in Bend before the pandemic. But watching the success of Rancher Butcher Chef, Bosa and Bos Taurus, he thought the timing might be right. “Those are big, loud, fun restaurants.”
The pair landed on the location of a former eatery and mini-golf center on Century Drive. The name Hawkeye & Huckleberry Lounge popped into Brian’s head, a synthesis of favorites, from ranch raptors and Hawkeye Pierce of TV’s “M*A*S*H,” to his dad’s dog named Huckleberry. Plus, it’s a favorite summer fruit. “And then, of course, the greatest Western of all time, Tombstone,” he said. In the film, Val Kilmer, as gunslinger Doc Holliday, has the memorable line, “I’m your huckleberry.” The brothers let Kilmer be their spirit guide. A larger-than-life, black-and-white poster of Holliday with his trademark line, blazes in pink neon and greets guests at the door of Hawk & Huck, which opened in June.
More than 450 guests packed the grand opening, sipping everything from “rhinestone cowgirl,” concoctions involving vodka, Cocchi, strawberry, apricot, lemon and glitter to Coors Light. Large canvas tents created glamp-styled dining and lounge areas, with faux-shearling and bourbon-colored, tufted velvet swivel chairs. Each tent was named for local towns, with tables big enough to hold an entire stockyard laid out in the form of charcuterie. James wielded a flamethrower for the one-of-a-kind ribbon-cutting, and local band The Shining Dimes played Patsy Cline.
Rhinestone Cowgirl Cocktail
Second-hand guitars and old cowboy hats line the walls, waiting for patrons to grab them, get in the spirit and, of course, post photos on Instagram. A vintage trailer named Dolly, formerly owned by one of the players in the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League, which the movie A League of Their Own is based on, is tucked between the stage and a spacious event room.
Malarkey recruited longtime industry collaborators and chefs Tony Torres and Carlos Anthony to carry out his ranch-to-plate culinary vision in Bend. He roped them in from endeavors in Las Vegas and San Diego respectively, letting them discover their inner cowboys while living at his family’s P-B Hawkeye Ranch. Learning what it takes for cows to go from graze to glaze is eye-opening for Torres and Anthony, self-described urban cowboys, and it’s inspiring them.
For Torres, that means menu items ranging from Oregon beef tartare and ranch aioli with hand-cut chips, lime chili rub, house pickles and roasted poblanos, to P-B Hawkeye Ranch 32-ounce porterhouse steak cooked over Oregon hardwood with a variety of sauces, from bone marrow gravy to horseradish cream. Add Dungeness crab hollandaise or fried oysters for a nod to the coast. Or, order a whole, roasted local pig two days in advance as a feast for eight.
The secret sauce, though, is engaging the entire staff in championing the story of local ranchers through every aspect of the dining experience.
“It doesn’t take a celebrity chef, it takes great people in every area, and that’s what Brian does better than anybody — he empowers you to be great — the best chef, the best bartender, the best restaurant,” said Anthony, who has competed against his mentor on Food Network’s “Superchef Grudge Match.”
Hawkeye & Huckleberry Lounge helps boost the neighborhood as a culinary zone, from The Flamingo Room and Hook & Plow to the old-school Cascade West Grub & Alehouse — Brian Malarkey appreciates them all. “And, the world’s greatest restaurant is right across the street from me — McDonald’s,” he said.
An hour remains before sunrise. The city sleeps, but it’s time for “The Mayor” to get to work. Pulling on a wetsuit, booties and gloves, all still damp from an evening session the night before, Lled Smith heads to the Deschutes River as he does every morning. He has totaled more than 1,000 surf sessions and tracks water flow on his website Greenwave Surf Report. When the water is high enough, he’ll ride the ever-in-motion Green Wave — named for the color of a glassy face on the eternally unbroken crest of river water. Smith won’t be solo for long. With the sun comes the half-dozen before-work, early risers.
They give way to a mid-morning crew, then the brunch club before lunch-breakers arrive. The groms come in a steady stream. From pre-dawn until after dark, there’s constant motion at the lineup. You’re never alone at the Green Wave, and for the community of surfers that exists there, they say that’s a good thing.
Lled Smith
All Are Welcome
“There’s a term in Hawaiian, e komo mai meaning ‘all are welcome,’” said Dave Chun, surfboard shaper and owner of Bend Surf. “Here at our wave it’s, ‘Take your turn, be nice, be kind, surf with aloha‘… that’s the Bend way.”
Smith has been there since the early days. “At first it was a ‘Bro Pit,’ a few guys that had been surfing the ditch [canal] before,” Smith said. While a few came with experience surfing a river wave, most did not and that was just as well: Surfing a standing wave is unlike surfing an ocean wave, so years on a point break don’t translate directly, which creates a camaraderie of learning together.
“It’s easier for me to hold someone’s hand,” Smith said, “than to watch them flop.” There’s a democracy in the line up, too, as everyone tests their patience waiting for their 60 seconds to ride, and inevitably does a lot of swimming when they float downriver after a wipeout. A kind of clockwork and social structure exists, one grounded in equanimity.
A welcoming vibe may be attributed in part to availability. The river flows 365 days a year, and when the flow is up, so is the wave. “The water keeps flowing, and the wave keeps coming,” said Austin Fernand, age 22 (first image on this post and shown above) and a two-time member of the U.S. River Surfing Team. He has surfed on rivers all over the world and said the consistency at Bend’s wave is part of what makes it unique. Compare that availability to the ocean, where scarcity creates anxiety, said Chun. There’s also no hierarchy in the lineup; a surfer’s position or the number of years a person has surfed at a local break don’t matter here. “Even if you got flushed down the river, you know your spot and just get back in line,” noted Smith. At the Green Wave, locals are friendly and check their egos before stepping onto an island where the line to take turns recognizes civility and order.
Poppy Smith
Aaron Smith knows a different experience, having surfed in Santa Cruz—a reef break known for its consistent waves and its localism—since he was 8 years old. At Steamer Lane, enforcers were known to keep the lineup in check, sometimes with a dose of grit. Living in Bend for more than 30 years, and an accomplished professional ski racer and cyclist, he questioned whether to introduce his 12-year-old daughter, Poppy, to surfing at the wave. That was six years ago, and the welcoming encouragement from the river surf community for his daughter contributed to Poppy’s love of surfing: “It’s different here,” Aaron said. Poppy calls him, “the ultimate Surf Dad.” Instead of enforcers, the Green Wave has teachers. It’s not uncommon to see Mr. Pipeline himself, Gerry Lopez, humbly lending a hand or offering tips to newcomers.
The minute you put on a wetsuit, you’re welcome as a surfer at a place engineered by wave shaper Ryan Richard, a river recreation specialist for Bend Park & Recreation District.
Gerry Lopez at the Green Wave
Engineered Stoke
Resembling Jason Momoa, Richard is a different kind of Aqua Man. He controls water levels at the Bend Whitewater Park’s three sections—a still-water habitat, the whitewater channel, and a fish ladder, referred to by some as the“kicks and giggles” lane for floaters. With the touch of a screen, Richard molds the surf waves of the whitewater channel remotely from an iPad, adjusting a series of 26 ramps and bladders positioned beneath the flowing water. At the top of the channel, Eddy’s Wave is the most complicated, with an interconnected structure below and frothy chaos above. Richard likens it to a “kayak rodeo hole,” with only skilled whitewater kayakers able to hold on for no more than a few seconds. Next down the channel, the Green Wave is named for the color of a foamless, consistent face of surfable water. At Jason’s Wave, below it, find kayakers, SUP riders or surfers who paddle in and pop up on a board. Each wave is technically a fish ladder, and surfers spending enough time on the water may see a fish swimming below them. But for Richard, his sights are on another species: the Oregon spotted frog, king of the river.
Dave Chun
Richard is charged with keeping the water levels upstream of the Colorado Bridge optimal for the frogs to breed and rear their young. Once the levels are adjusted for the frogs, calls come in from the surfers describing a wave that may need to change: it might be foamy, crumbly or “boney”—a reference to lower water levels exposing ramp structure, a bed of stones or a particular chicken head-shaped rocky hazard below. Conversely, if the flow is strong enough, Richards may get a call to “put in the rib”—a combination of ramp angles that creates a spine in the wave and simulates a bowl.
With spotted frogs on one side of the equation and up to 250,000 floaters during peak summer months on the other, numbers on the Green Wave island can inflate on a summer day, too, with up to 20 surfers lining up for their water time.
A Tragic Turn
Yet, despite its welcoming name and increasing popularity, the Bend Whitewater Park is not without risk. Although masterfully engineered, the wave channel is still within a dynamic and unpredictable river. On April 30, 2022, the power of the water claimed the life of a beloved member of the surfing community. Ben Murphy, 17 years old, passed away while surfing the wave in an event that deeply affected the immediate and extended surf family. Some would never return to the sport, others paused for an extended time in reverence. A memorial on the surf island invokes his spirit, honors him and is seen by every passerby. Murphy’s life and memory bind the community in ways far beyond recreation.
Island Life
Mary Ann Kruz, age 72, has surfed most of her life and is a regular at the wave.
Mary Ann Kruz
“The Green Wave community,” she said, “is one without barriers of economics, race, age or size.” This ethos carries over into the range of boards under the arm or feet of each rider. From bright pink foamies to custom-made river boards, any board is acceptable here. While traditional lengths are four to five feet, Allie Hofmann brings down her 7’6″ board—a length approaching the span of the wave itself. “At the basic level, it’s more about the rider than the board,” said Chun.
Allie Hofmann
Riders start young. The newly founded Central Oregon Surf Team Association (COSTA) high school league will host its first competition at the wave August 17. Called “Grom Con,” it features not only traditional heats, but one designated for riders on anything not classified as a board. “It’s about having fun,” said Chip Conrad, founder of COSTA, explaining how the competition will draw students from Boise and Chelan to face off against Central Oregon surfers.
“Whatever state you’re in, this is the elixir,” said Hofmann. “You can’t help but be soothed by the molecules coming off the water. It’s calming. You have socializing, physical exertion and endorphins—it’s a recipe for joy,” she said. At the Green Wave, there’s always someone there to lend a hand, let you know where your board pops up, and of course to whoop and holler at your success. That’s community. “Having a good day? Surf,” she said. “Having a bad day? Surf. It makes everything better.”
Without a doubt, we have a lot of outdoor activities to experience in Bend. From hundreds of miles of mountain biking trails to cooling off by floating the Deschutes River, it can seem like recreation in Central Oregon is endless.
That is, until you’ve lived here for a while and feel like you’ve done all that Bend offers. But the truth is, you haven’t discovered the next best thing: exploring trails on an ATV.
Here at Bend Magazine, we try our very best to keep you updated on the happenings around Central Oregon and what to do on any given day, any time of year. So, when Matt Miller and his crew at Octane Adventures invited us out for a day of four-wheeling on some of Central Oregon’s ATV trails, we jumped at the opportunity and thought we’d bring you along for the adventure.
Hitting the Trails with Octane Adventures
Octane Adventures offers a few different trips, both guided and self-guided. After reading rave reviews online, we opted for the guided tour, which we strongly recommend, too. Octane Adventures guides take you to all the best local spots as they know the area like the back of their hands. Access areas and views most people won’t reach even on the most epic hiking days. Propelled on four wheels, see lava flows, serene alpine lakes and views of the Cascade Range. Plus, with our guide leading the way, we didn’t waste time circling the same backroads, missing the best viewpoints, spots to cool off, or secret trails. We could focus on the fun, with no risk of getting lost. Despite maps on smartphones, ATV routes can take riders pretty far out there in areas with little to no cell service.
Octane Adventures offers two different guided tours: If you only have two hours, check out Octane’s High Cascade Scenic Tour. As the name suggests, the High Cascades Scenic Tour will take you deep into Central Oregon’s backroads, to spectacular viewpoints nearly inaccessible by regular vehicles.
If you have more time, consider Octane Adventures’ Black Sands ATV Tour. The Black Sands tour gets deep into Central Oregon’s backcountry, featuring some of the area’s most challenging trails and backroads. Stunning mountain views, lakes, streams, and lava flows await you on this 4-hour ATV experience.
Tours with Octane Adventures take you so close to the Cascade Range that you can nearly reach out and touch the mountains. After winding down pine forest backcountry roads, you come upon some of the most pristine lakes and remarkable geological features, like lava flows and lava tube caves. We watched as bald eagles soared overhead. It is truly unbelievable to know this is right here in our backyard! Bend Magazine’s guided tour with Octane Adventures had us riding up to Little Cache Mountain near Mount Washington for some of the most spectacular 360-degree views we have ever seen.
To say we had fun would be an understatement.
If you have a handle on the area and know where to go, signing up for a self-guided tour is an option. Rental of one of Octane’s side-by-side ATVs, for four- or eight-hour rental options. The price of a four-hour rental was same as the four-hour Black Sands ATV Tour, so we opted to go with a guide to uncover Central Oregon’s secret spots.
How an Octane Adventures Trip Works
Booking a trip through Octane Adventures’ website is super easy. First, choose between the High Cascades, Black Sands, or self-guided trips. Next, select the dates you want to go — Octane Adventures will automatically filter out the days they are fully booked on their calendar. Lastly, after you confirm your booking, you’ll receive a booking confirmation with all the information you need for your ATV adventure.
On the day of your trip, you’ll meet Octane Adventures at their trailhead in Sisters, where they will have their brand new Polaris RZR XP1000 4-seaters waiting for you. And, yes, despite this being a “guided” tour, you and up to three friends will be driving one of these go-anywhere, off-road machines.
Driving the Polaris side-by-side should come naturally, as automatic transmission and power steering make them very similar to the car you showed up in. And don’t be afraid of getting lost, as each side-by-side is equipped with a user-friendly GPS navigation system. That way, you can track where the other vehicles are on the map at all times. Everyone stays together on this excursion.
Before you follow your guide deep into the forest, Octane Adventures goes over a few safety items. You’ll discuss where you are going and get a comprehensive orientation of how to operate the side-by-side. Next, you’ll be fitted for a helmet and goggles, both provided by Octane Adventures. And before the pedal hits the floor, you’ll be shown how to strap into the 3-point harness in your seat properly.
If you want to amp up your safety knowledge, watch the ATV safety and trail etiquette videos, along with a liability release form sent to you beforehand—they’re packed with useful tips, especially if this is your first time operating an ATV.
Pro Tips from the Trail
Use the bathroom before leaving home, there are no facilities in the backcountry.
Pack water, snacks, or lunch (you can rent a cooler from Octane).
Be sure to stay hydrated and fueled to fully enjoy your epic adventure!
Now, you’re ready to ride. See you on the trails!
Explore Winters with Octane, Too
When the temperature drops and snow begins to fall, Octane Adventures trades their side-by-sides for snowmobiles. And while they explore the Cascade Mountains outside of Sisters during the summer, Octane heads south to explore Newberry Crater in the winter.
Octane Adventures offers three different guided snowmobile tours. The first is a two-hour tour of some of the most scenic locations at Newberry Crater. Two hours is added to the second tour option, with a stop at the historic Paulina Lake Lodge for food and drinks (which we highly recommend). The third tour has riders chasing the sunset around Newberry Crater to catch some of the most spectacular golden hour views.
Pro Tip for Weather
Embrace weather of all kinds! Cloudy sunsets can reveal an equally stunning and moody winter landscape. Tours for all four seasons offer remarkable experiences, rain, snow or shine.
Ready for Your Adventure?
Octane Adventures is your ticket to discovering more of Bend. Whether you’re exploring trails in summer or cruising the snow in winter, they offer an adventure like no other. So what are you waiting for? Book your trip and explore the wild side of Central Oregon.
Oregon, Winter 2014: It had been unusually cold and windy for days at Imperial Stock Ranch near Shaniko, Oregon, where 50 square miles of sheep, cattle, grains and hay have been raised since 1871. With temperatures around zero and two feet of snow, ranch owners Jeanne Carver and her husband Dan, and their team were feeling the stress of long hours and nonstop demands, heightened by the harsh weather. Jeanne moved through the lambing grounds, worriedly looking for any ewes that might be birthing amid the falling snow. She spotted two newborns near a huge snow bank. One had no heartbeat and she tried to revive it, but it seemed she was too late. Picking up the second lamb, barely alive, she prayed while coaxing the mother to follow her into the shed. Immediately milking the ewe, she tubed the warm liquid into the lamb’s stomach. She nestled it under a heat lamp, wrapping it with hot towels, urgently drying it. She went back for the other sibling, picked it up and cradled it close, shielding it from the storm.
Retelling the story, her voice cracked, tears welling in her eyes, as she recalled placing it on a trailer load of straw. She was about to return to the other newborn when she saw a tiny movement of the lamb’s body. She touched its sides and put her finger in its mouth—a tiny gasp for air came, then another. Tucking the lamb inside her jacket, close to the warmth of her body, she sped on an all-terrain vehicle to her house. At the wood stove she worked for the next hour, repeating, “I won’t let you die.”
Then her phone rang. On the other side of the world, in Sochi, Russia, Team USA was about to compete in the 2014 Winter Olympics. Following criticism that Team USA’s uniforms were being made in China, Polo Ralph Lauren discovered the Carvers’ fledgling wool company, which was working to revive United States wool production. The Carvers had worked with the fashion magnate for 18 months on sourcing Imperial Stock Ranch wool for the Olympic uniforms. The call was from the lead designer—the team was about to take the world stage and appear in the opening ceremony wearing uniforms made with yarn from the Carvers’ sheep.
The juxtaposition of the two scenes, both detailed in Carver’s book Stories of Fashion, Textiles, and Place: Evolving Sustainable Supply Chains, written with co-author Leslie Davis Burns, fueled her quest to revive American wool production. The book builds upon the ranch’s commitment since the 1980s to use sustainable and regenerative practices for the future health of the soil, water, grasslands and grazing animals. At age 70, Jeanne Carver continues to lead a “ranch-to-retail” movement. She reconnects people to the source of what they wear by delivering fully traceable, American-grown merino wool to fashion brands, and returns a net-positive value to nature.
Expanding Farming Practices To Promote Healthy Ecosystems And Biodiversity
In 2018, Carver established Shaniko Wool Company as a farm group to scale the economics of making certified United States wool widely available to apparel brands, and to expand farming practices that promote healthy ecosystems and preserve biodiversity. The company includes 10 United States sheep ranches, grazing more than 2.6 million acres in the West, and producing 500,000 pounds of merino wool annually. It supplied the wool for Team USA uniforms for the Winter Olympics in 2014, then again in 2018 and 2022.
Her unflagging commitment has brought local wool to runways around the world, and caught the attention of the British Royal Family. Carver and her company were featured in His Majesty at 75: The Leadership and Vision of King Charles III, a velvet-covered commemorative book detailing the causes Charles champions, including regenerative agriculture and Shaniko Wool’s role in it. Carver, whose flowing strawberry-blonde hair and Western style translates readily from ranch to runway, attended the King’s book launch party in London in November.
Heritage Meets the Future
Her focus on regenerative work began in 1999, when globalization and a focus on synthetics torpedoed the commodity market for wool. “It changed everything,” she said. “That required us to think differently in order to sell our harvest and survive. So we began this journey of taking our wool harvest and adding value to it, meaning, you clean it, comb it, spin it, dye it, you knit it, you weave it, and you create a finished product.”
She began instinctively, with no training, educating herself along the way. Even before working with local chefs to promote her lamb in a newly emerging farm-to-table movement, she took that approach to the wool. “I paired it with our history, our deep heritage, the story of our land and stewardship, because that’s the number one thing we do—manage the health of natural resources.”
“Wool was one of those fibers that I realized was supporting my energy, my life force.”
Those efforts made Imperial Stock Ranch the first in the world to receive a new third-party certification, the Responsible Wool Standard, which aims to improve the welfare of sheep and the land on which they graze. That certification for Shaniko wool is a game-changer in getting brands such as DeFeet sock company to use it, said Paul Willerton of Bend, partner in the North Carolina-based sock manufacturer since 1993. Willerton, a former professional bike racer, believes in wool as the ultimate fiber for comfort and durability. “Whatever the conditions are, you realize that some garments are kind of supporting your life force, while other garments seem like they’re trying to kill you,” he said. “Wool was one of those fibers that I realized was supporting my energy, my life force.”
Jeanne Carver’s wool (Imperial Stock Ranch/Shaniko Wool Company) was used for Team USA uniforms in three consecutive Winter Olympic games.
A Mission of Education
Consumer awareness is key to driving change within the industry, Willerton said. Once people understand the profound value of ethically sourced products—for themselves and the environment—it can help disrupt the status quo. DeFeet and similar companies aim to challenge larger brands to prioritize supply chain transparency and sustainability, and prompt ethical and environmentally astute choices to become the norm.
That mission is central to the work of Leslie Davis Burns, professor emerita at Oregon State University in Corvallis, who co-wrote Stories of Fashion, Textiles, and Place: Evolving Sustainable Supply Chains with Carver. The 2021 book profiles five fashion and textile companies around the world—from Phnom Penh and Peru to Scotland and Shaniko—with evolving sustainable supply chains. Burns chose each company based on their values and honor for the land, the culture, and the people of the place where they are deeply rooted, leading to their successes.
Burns recalled reading Carver’s early draft. “I got tears in my eyes,” she said. “It was so beautifully written, so passionate, you could just feel it.”
Carver knows she needs data as well as passion to tell the story fully. In 2020, she launched an initiative with Oregon State University to do ongoing research revealing the collective carbon footprint of all the wool company’s ranches, and by extension, its wool supply. “We’re a ‘carbon sink’—net-positive to nature. This is very valuable information for the companies who buy the fiber and for the customers at the retail market level who care,” Carver said. “And the greatest value is to us ranchers, who now have data and a new tool we never had before to help influence our ranch management practices.”
Carver’s story of strength and determination, amid the complexities of integrating sustainability into the fashion industry, seems to be fueled by a theme from her college days. “I was a hurdler,” she shared. To Carver, obstacles are motivation. In the area of sustainable ranching practices, overcoming barriers is key to a healthy planet and future.
Throughout winter, Mt. Bachelor buzzes with activity that most of us Bendites never see. Beyond the groomers and the parking lot plows, teams run deliveries through the night to dole out everything from snowmobile parts to the untold tons of chicken tenders that visitors blow through by day. The effort required to keep the lifts spinning alone is breathtaking. While we sleep, the maintenance folks inspect and de-ice exactly 1,248 chairs on 20 miles of cable across 195 towers. Every last one of the “sheaves,” those wheels that a lift cable rolls over, has to be inspected, too. There are roughly 2,600 of them. Here, meet just a few of the wizards working behind the curtain to make our winters spectacular.
The Power Couple
Every time you hop on a Mt. Bachelor chairlift, offer thanks to Alicia Smith and her husband, Brandon. Waking up at 2:45 a.m. each day, the power couple drives to the mountain long before the plows fire up to make sure the lifts are ready to go—all before most of us are even thinking about getting out of bed. Together, they and their teams strengthen the backbone of what carries us up the mountain.
Alicia and Brandon Smith, make sure the lifts are ready to go—all before most of us are even thinking about getting out of bed.
The Smiths started working at Mt. Bachelor almost 20 years ago as lift operators. But in the years since, they’ve moved into different roles. Brandon is now the mountain’s senior lift maintenance manager and Alicia, who helped install Cloudchaser, is the resort’s life maintenance electrical supervisor for anything under 600 volts, which includes every lift, some of which can produce up to 1,000 horsepower.
Everyday, the team inspects 1248 chairs & 20 miles of cable across 195 towers.
Mount Bachelor’s weather makes things tricky, particularly with ice that can build up on the sheaves. It’s imperative that they spin freely to prevent the cables from damaging them. To clear them, the team will run the lift backwards for a bit to knock off much of the ice without breaking tower sensors which make sure the cables stay in their tracks. Team members will then ski or snowmobile down the lift lines, inspecting each one of the sheaves. If one isn’t spinning, someone will climb up the tower and free it by hand. It can take days during a storm cycle to get them all spinning properly. Summit Express actually rotates constantly at a slow rate, even during the night, to help prevent ice build-up and allow for a quicker opening. Other teams work to clear snow from the terminal stations, making sure all the belts and pulleys are ice-free. There are more than 2,100 belts alone. Many of them have to be cleared by hand.
Chipping ice off lift cables
Meanwhile, Alicia will go around making sure the lift controls are all functioning. Ice can get into those, too, and cause the contacts to fail, which means she has to swap out a lot of switches. Those are easy, Alicia said. The worst is when a communication cable breaks. The cables run top to bottom on every tower, and sometimes right along the ground, because burying cables in volcanic rock is challenging. “They get eaten up,” Alicia explained. When a circuit fails, she has to go find the weak spot in the cable, which can be buried under a winter’s worth of snow. “It can take hours, or even days,” she said. One of the most difficult things she’s ever had to deal with was a time when the Northwest Express motor failed. She’d had it “totally dialed in” as one season came to a close, only to discover something that happened over the summer fried it. “The motor had literally pulled itself apart,” she said. It was too late to buy a new one for the season, and most companies won’t rebuild a motor like that for liability reasons.
Eventually, she did find someone willing to take it on, and now the motor functions like it’s brand new. This year, Alicia has some other challenges to look forward to, namely the new Skyliner Express lift which runs on AC power, just like a home appliance. All of the other lifts run on DC, like most battery-powered devices. The control systems are wildly different, with small “programmable logic controller” cards that replace the thousands of relays and switches. “With the older lifts, I can walk up to them and physically change whatever is wrong,” she said. “Now, it’s more about reading lights and figuring out what they mean.”
Evening comes. The Smiths pile into their Ford F-150 and head home to feed the dogs, eat and wash up. By 8 p.m. they’re fast asleep.
The Wizard of Mt. Bachelor
For the past 24 seasons, Betsy Norsen has been an integral part of Mt. Bachelor, first as a ski patroller and now as senior mountain operations manager. That means she oversees all of the grooming, terrain parks and various maintenance teams. “It’s all encompassing,” she said. “There’s always something that needs to be done.” Norsen is typically on the road up to the mountain by 6 a.m., listening to radio chatter on her Motorola from the maintenance and grooming crews that have been working all night. She gets weather reports specific to Mt. Bachelor, and right away she can tell if it’s going to be a difficult start to the day—say, winds are high or lifts are frozen—or if it’s going to be “a turnkey” kind of morning.
Summit Express rotates constantly, even during the night, to prevent ice buildup.
Norsen was once at the top of Sunrise Express when winds hit 100 mph, which means the lifts couldn’t run at all because they’ll slam into or even miss “the trumpet,” a rail that guides the chair into the station. Many times, it’s a game to figure out how to open what they can as safely and efficiently as possible. Pine Marten Express has 102 chairs—Northwest has 180—and if the radio chatter suggests the crews are stopping the lift to clear each one, she may have to pull people off one job and send them out to another to help. “There are a lot of puzzle pieces,” she said. By 6:30 a.m., the first snow reports and conditions updates will be posted online. By 7:30 a.m., she’ll have a better idea of which lifts will open and when. At 2 p.m., she’ll meet with the marketing team and operations teams to see if there were any surprises and what they can learn from that day. “We’ll come up with a plan for the next day and hope the stars align,” she said. “Then, when all of the guests go home, another whole world begins.”
Time to Clear the Lots
As the director of base operations, Ryan Gage—just “Gage,” to his friends—is in charge of a lot of what skiers first encounter when they arrive at the mountain, namely making sure the parking lots are clear, among his long list of other duties. Gage will start touching base with his team daily at around 4 a.m. All through the night, crews have been working to groom the slopes, restock the lodges, distribute parts and mail, haul out the trash, and make sure no one staying in the RV areas needs help.
The director of base operations at Mt. Bachelor, Ryan Gage
Keeping the West Village parking area clear, however, is a gargantuan task alone. The lot covers 20.8 acres, which means that even a two-inch storm leaves roughly 158,000 cubic feet of snow to push around (enough to bury your average driveway in at least 80 feet of the stuff). In all, Gage will have six or seven operators working the rotary snow blowers, the loader, the plow trucks, and the grader, to clear the four lots at Sunrise, the Skyliner lot, West Village, and all of the service roads while the rest of us are sleeping. “They have to touch every parking lot and every roadway, every night,” he said. “They’re a very busy crew.” To do that work, Gage goes through a massive amount of diesel fuel. One blower working one shift can burn through 400 gallons of it. On a big storm night, it can be even more than that. Oftentimes, the plow or grader can only make a few passes before the snow gets too deep to move and a blower will have to come in to throw it farther out of the way. It’s a never-ending cycle. “The way snow works, the more you touch it, the more air you take out of it and the denser it gets,” Gage said. “It just slows everything down.”
Ski Patrol starting their day at Mt. Bachelor
Preparing for the Party
It’s shortly before 5 a.m. and Dave “DT” Thomas silences his alarm. He makes coffee, then checks the webcams and weather. As Mt. Bachelor’s Ski Patrol director, Thomas faces a similar challenge every morning: to figure out the mountain’s “operational footprint.” Is the plan to get Northwest Express open? Is there a race on Cliffhanger that day? Knowing those facts will dictate a lot of the morning. Most of the patrollers arrive by 7:30 a.m. and are on the mountain by 8. Together, they’ll get to work setting up signage and fencing and stringing up the ropes. “It’s like setting the table for a party,” Thomas said.
Every patroller has medical training, but before the day begins, they’re more focused on the mountain itself. Avalanche work gets a lot of attention. The avalanche teams will show up around 6 a.m. to get a jump on the snow-safety checks. Since patrollers are on the mountain every single day, they have a good sense of the conditions and which areas might slide. Several “indicator” slopes offer a snapshot of what could be going on up high, too. For instance, there’s an area they call Old Downhill near the top of Skyliner Express that can get a cornice on it that may need to be destroyed, lest it collapse and hurt someone.
Avalanche Work at Mt. Bachelor
Up high, teams of two will venture out into the cirque carrying explosives—typically a two-pound emulsion mixture—while wearing float bags and avalanche beacons, just in case they get caught in a slide themselves. One person will ignite the charge by drawing a wire coated with red phosphorus through a cardboard tube that lights the 90-second fuse, a tricky task if your gloves are frozen. Another patroller ties a length of rope to the charge so it can be raised and lowered on the slope to the exact spot. The charge ignites. Everyone in the parking lot looks up. It’s going to be a good day.
Catch extended interviews with the team at Mt. Bachelor. Listen to The Circling Podcast at BendMagazine.com/podcast.
