TamMac Day 3

Day three was a bit of a turning point for us…we were losing part of our group which meant that we would be down to four of us.  Bob, Eric, and Nathan decided that they had to re-arrange their sock drawers and apparently needed to all supervise each other while doing it.  Legitimately, there were excuses of vacation plans in Hawaii, Superbowl parties, blah blah blah…all I heard was excuses as to why the three princesses did not want to go out for a morning adventure.   After all, the Superbowl was a day a way and Saturday was young!

Alas, they remained stubborn and were determined to not have any more big fun in amazing terrain.  After they whined about how their toe nail polish was coming off and did not want to risk the possibility of their Lee press on nails coming off while having fun, they packed up and talked about the logistics of getting back to the parking lot which was 6 miles away.  There was one borrowed snowmobile between the three of them so this was bound to be humorous.  They finally figured out who would carry what while be towed by who…and it went a little something like this:
Nathan would commandeer the controls of the sled - Captain Nathan had Bob strapped to his back, who had Eric's 'end of days' backpack filled with everything under the sun.  The backpack dwarfed Bob as he hung on to Nathan for dear life while going.  It was all rather comical….it looked like the huge pack was riding Bob like a drunken sailor who just reach port, and in turn Bob was riding Nathan like it was his first pony.

We watched them sputter away with Eric pulling up the rear ala water ski mode on his ski's.  The remaining four of us decided there was bound to be a good story when this was all said and done.

They disappeared around a corner and all of a sudden, things were different…we were going to miss their camaraderie.

As we got ready, we expected them to limp back into camp with some story about how the snowmobile blew up, or Eric's pack blew up, etc….

The rest of us rallied for a trip back up to the ridges.  The day was the most clear we had had until that point and the views were bound to be ridiculously good!  and they were!  The whole range opened up…we could see Paulina, then Tumalo, then bachelor, then Moon, then Ball Butte, then Brokentop, then S, Middle, N Sister, then Hoodoo, then Mt Washington, then 3 Fingered Jack, and of course Mt Jefferson…in the distance to our east we could even make out Smith rocks.  Wow!  Killer views.  We decided to head back up to our lookout lunch spot to take in the views.

A few pictures and with lunch in our bellies, we headed back down - we ended up at Probiscus where we dropped into a little bowl/terrain trap that skied like butter.  Since it was a shortie distance out of the bowl and the snow was pretty consolidated, we boot packed out…urggg, I forget how much work that is.  We went up to Jelly roll and got a quick lap in and then dropped into the bowl we all dropped into on our first day.  The snow was holding up AMAZINGLY.  I was blown away by how well the snow was still skiing - there were still stashes of great untouched snow beckoning for tracks - and we obliged.

Soon enough, we made our way back down to the yurts and settled in for the evening.  It was our last evening at the yurts and once again we ate like kings.
That evening was much more subdued than the prior evenings but it was good to chillax and look forward to day 4 of riding.